Mastery approach in teaching
Mathematics
East Stour Primary School places a great emphasis on a Mastery approach to Maths. Not only do we have a Maths Mastery Teacher leading Maths in the school but we have also had the opportunity to work collaboratively with other schools and place a great focus on professional development for our teachers.
We have recently been involved in working as part of a TRG group (A TRG is a group of teachers working collaboratively to improve their practice) Each of the 140 Mastery Specialists (four in each Maths Hub area) has set up a TRG, with teachers from their own school and schools in the surrounding area, and started to explore, share and refine some teaching for mastery approaches which has allowed us to evaluate and scrutinise our practice to make our curriculum ever evolving, meeting the needs of all our children at East Stour Primary School.
The Maths lead ensures our curriculum has a clear focus and is in line with the National Curriculum (2014) and has led many staff development sessions within school to ensure teachers plan small steps of learning, ensuring strong foundations in Maths concepts (especially number) are secure, as well as providing opportunities for children with gaps in knowledge to revisit concepts which have been more difficult for them to master.
Whilst East Stour Primary School recognises the need for support to be given to learners which find Maths mastery more difficult we also recognise for some children Maths fluency is embedded and so our curriculum also aims to offer breadth and depth to those children encouraging them to deepen their understanding in a range of contexts. This is achieved through carefully selected, open ended problem solving and reasoning questions which challenge children’s understanding and conceptual ideas and lead them to apply and explain their thinking in a deep and coherent way.
We aim to provide a curriculum which is robust, vigorous and engaging for all children. A curriculum which entices children into learning Maths whatever level or experience they are at. A curriculum which makes children believe they can be good at Maths and be clear that Maths is something they can use in their everyday lives. A curriculum which prepares them for the next part of their journey whichever path that may take.
Why are we using this approach?
Mastery of Maths means a deep, long-term, secure and flexible understanding of the subject of Maths. This joined up way of learning is something that we want pupils to acquire, so a ‘mastery Maths curriculum’ aims to help pupils, over time, acquire mastery of the subject and make clear links between the concepts they are using. It allows them to understand why they are learning skills and places a relevance to their lives.
We believe there are a number of elements which will help children develop mastery of Maths;
Mastery of Maths, will build gradually as a child goes through school, and is a tool for life, However, mastery is an approach which children can be exposed to at all levels of understanding and should be an integral part of all Maths lessons. We believe that this approach is immeasurably more valuable than the short term ability to answer questions in tests or exams.
Building Fluency for our children
Russell (2000) spells this out in more detail and suggests that fluency consists of three elements:
Efficiency - this implies that children do not get bogged down in too many steps or lose track of the logic of the strategy. An efficient strategy is one that the student can carry out easily, keeping track of sub-problems and making use of intermediate results to solve the problem.
Accuracy depends on several aspects of the problem-solving process, among them careful recording, knowledge of number facts and other important number relationships, and double-checking results.
Flexibility requires the knowledge of more than one approach to solving a particular kind of problem, such as two-digit multiplication. Students need to be flexible in order to choose an appropriate strategy for the numbers involved, and also be able to use one method to solve a problem and another method to check the results.
So fluency demands more of students than memorising a single procedure – they need to understand why they are doing what they are doing and know when it is appropriate to use different methods.
Our curriculum aims to interweave these basic number skills with the mental procedures in a number of ways-assisting children to make clear links, mental pictures and connections in a way which is helpful for them to develop a strategy which is efficient, adaptable and meaningful for them.
Why do children need to be fluent?
To the person without number sense, arithmetic is a bewildering territory in which any deviation from the known path may rapidly lead to being totally lost. Dowker (1992)
The phrase ‘number sense’ is often used to mean conceptual fluency – understanding place value and the relationships between operations. Children need to be both procedurally and conceptually fluent – they need to know both how and why. Children who engage in a lot of practice without understanding what they are doing often forget, or remember incorrectly, those procedures. Further, there is growing evidence that once students have memorised and practised procedures without understanding, they have difficulty learning later to bring meaning to their work (Hiebert, 1999).
Teaching for Mastery
A mastery approach to teaching and learning has been designed to support the aims and objectives of the National Curriculum.
A mastery approach has number at its heart. A large proportion of time is spent reinforcing number to build competency and confidence when asking “now I know that what can I find out next”.
This thirst for learning, mind set and resilience will be more easily achieved when children feel confident with recall of basic number facts also making application of these facts through a procedure more efficient and useful to our learners.
What does this look like in practice?
Our curriculum is underpinned by “The White Rose” planning units. However, this only provides the building blocks and coverage ensuring all children experience the same rich diet of Maths. However, the magic happens when skilled teachers and professionals use this well to plan sequential, conceptual lessons which take children on their own unique Maths learning journey.
We believe that when introduced to a key new concept within Maths, children need a hook or a visual stimulus in which to hang their learning on. This could be as simple as a picture or diagram to a piece of Maths equipment. Having this available gives them something tangible which they can develop their understanding as well as test hypotheses and develop patterns in the numbers they are working with.
We believe that Concrete – Pictorial – Abstract approach does this well and is paramount in the teaching of Maths at East Stour Primary School (please see calculation policy for examples)
Nursery and Early Years
Our Early Years plays a vital role in creating confident and purposeful mathematicians. Our Early Years prides itself on providing memorable mathematical experiences for all children. Applying Maths through real life (play based) experiences is essential in our youngest children becoming excited and about Maths whilst also placing a great the importance of children playing with and manipulating numbers. The skills set of the adults working in the Early Years setting is to develop children’s understanding of mathematical concepts through carefully planned and clever questioning, targeting children of all levels of development and moving their learning forward encouraging them to make the leap their next step in learning.
The most important part of Maths in Early Years is hands on practical Maths which is FUN!
Main Goal- “I am a mathematician”
As a school we believe that all students can succeed in Mathematics. We do not believe that there are children who can do Maths and those that can’t. A positive, resilient mindset for mathematics and strong subject knowledge are key to children’s success.
At East Stour Primary School we are committed to foster children’s deep, long-term and flexible understanding of the subject of Maths. As a school we believe that all pupils will be successful at Maths and believe they can be a mathematician.
East Stour
