Curriculum Focus: Maths
Maths at Sprowston Junior
Maths is a subject that can divide opinion for some people. Bad experiences at school can often be the cause for people being ‘turned off’ maths at an early age. The aim at Sprowston Junior is to make maths enjoyable and to remove as many of those fears about maths – for children and for adults too. We do this by spending time looking at maths in different ways and by talking about a variety of methods, solutions and approaches. Here are some of the things we do to help make maths more engaging – and less scary!
Maths lessons: Each class has maths lessons on most days. These may not be every day but maths is covered every day in every class. Lessons are often structured to give time for input from the teacher, discussion with friends as well as plenty of time for children to explore the maths topic being covered. All classes have TA support which is used to support or extend children as is needed.
Maths meetings: These are a less structured than a maths lesson and give children more opportunity to talk their way round a problem or challenge. Each class has up to three maths meetings a week.
Maths monkey: You may have already seen your child’s class Maths Monkey (although some classes have adopted other animals). These creatures (and their accompanying books) are sent home to give children the chance to discover more about maths at home. Entries in our past Maths Monkey books have included maths at: the gym, in the pool, at korfball, at the beach… You get the idea – maths is everywhere!
Maths websites: You will probably have already seen the log on details in your child’s Home/School Journal. These log ons are to different websites that we use in school to promote and develop maths skills across the school. Resources like Times Table Rock Stars and Stick and Split are a great way of improving timetable skills. Sumdog and Prodigy allow children to explore maths through games. Mymaths is a fantastic tool for online homework and Numbots is great at helping children understand number. Links to all these sites are on your child’s Year Group Google Classroom page.
Maths Champions: Every year several Year 6 pupils are chosen to be Maths Champions. Their role is to help promote maths across the school. These Maths Champions are keen to help others with all things maths. Their roles include: helping to run parent sessions (see below), running school-wide maths competitions, hosting a House times tables challenge, running pupil voice sessions and visiting their nominated class to help with maths during the week.
Maths parent sessions: Before lockdown, we ran regular parent sessions. These included an introduction in to maths at Sprowston Junior, sessions looking at calculation methods and a summer maths trail. All sessions were supported by our very own Year 6 Maths Champions. We will be running these again this year. There will be an introduction to maths on Tuesday 12th October at 9am and again at 2pm the same day – we hope to see you there!
Maths priorities this year: Every year we look at what has worked well and what we need to adapt or change to make maths at Sprowston Junior even better. This helps us identify areas that we need to focus on for the forthcoming school year. This year’s focus areas are…
- To ensure level of challenge in maths lessons remains high. This will ensure children are provided with work and activities that stretch them and make them think about maths in different ways.
- To review calculation policy to ensure the needs of the learners are still being met. While numbers themselves don’t change the way maths is taught can vary. By reviewing the calculation policy we are ensuring that we are providing the most up to date methods that support the teaching and learning of maths at Sprowston Junior.
- Include examples of calculation to support teaching and learning. The current maths policy is based around examples of maths calculations to help teachers and provide a consistent approach throughout the school.
- To relaunch use of online maths tools to support maths across the school. If home learning taught us one thing it was how effect online resources can be in supporting work in school. The websites listed above will be used across the school to support teaching and learning of maths.
- To relaunch maths monkey as part of weekly homework across the school. Before lockdown Maths Monkeys were sent home regularly so we are hoping that they can come to visit you all again soon.
- To relaunch maths meetings across the school. We have used these slightly less formal maths sessions to help children talk about different ways round maths problems. The aim is to re-introduce them across the school again this year.
