Maths

Head of Maths: Mr K Chalashika

Email: chalashikak@hanson.org.uk

Curriculum Intent

We believe that students deserve a creative and ambitious mathematics curriculum, rich in skills and knowledge, which ignites curiosity and prepares them well for everyday life and future employment. Our mathematics curriculum will give students the opportunity to:

  • become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
  • reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.
  • can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and preserving in seeking solutions.
  • can communicate, justify, argue and prove using mathematical vocabulary.
  • develop their character, including resilience, confidence and independence, so that they contribute positively to the life of the school, their local community and the wider environment.

Pedagogy

Our pedagogy is underpinned by:

  • a mastery approach to the teaching of mathematics for understanding.
  • a spiral curriculum basing future teaching on the building blocks taught previously.
  • concepts that are broken down into small connected and structured steps enabling application to range of contexts.
  • variation to develop deep and holistic understanding.
  • procedural fluency and repetition of key facts to free up working memory.
  • manipulatives and multiple representations used to build and scaffold learning.
  • marking and feedback that informs planning and addresses misconceptions promptly.
  • questioning planned intelligently.
  • interventions that are timely, planned and effective from Trust wide unified assessments.
  • students who see error as a learning opportunity and are resilient in their learning.

Enrichment

We will enrich our curriculum by:

  • offering further opportunities for students to study mathematics whether with GCSE Statistics or Further Mathematics.
  • establishing cross-curricular links especially through the learning of numerical skills and application in other areas.
  • holding Trust-wide competitions and participating in national competitions to celebrate best work and extraordinary effort.
  • using external resources to enhance and support independent learning and revision.
  • experience of practical implementation of mathematics in everyday life for financial and numerical confidence and security.
  • opportunities to promote STEM and further/higher education learning and careers.
  • UKMT maths challenge – Top students take part in the UKMT maths challenge each term. 60-minute, multiple-choice Challenge. It encourages mathematical reasoning, precision of thought, and fluency in using basic mathematical techniques to solve interesting problems. The problems on the Mathematical Challenge are designed to make students think. (link: Home – UKMT).
  • Dallowgill trips – In the run up to our GCSE exams this year we had the absolute delight of taking some our hardest working Year 11s to Dallow Gill. Where not only did we ensure that pupils had a restful and calm space to learn maths but also to Teach our children important life skills, and provide them with life enhancing experiences they hadn’t received during COVID-19 lockdowns (Link:Environmental and Outdoor Education Centre – Dallowgill (deltadallowgill.org.uk))
  • Aim Higher – Year 8 & 9 students take part in the aim higher project to enhance their mathematical ability.
  • Maths trips to enhance the experience of Maths
  • Celebration of World Maths day (14th March 2024): To celebrate World Maths Day, the maths department offered a seemingly simple problem to students… you can win a £20 Amazon Voucher for just writing down one number. Unsurprisingly, the queue for the ballot box was huge on the line and at break time! However, there was a catch! You had to pick the LOWEST, UNIQUE INTEGER in the school… and this is harder than it seems.

Other general principles

Our curriculum will enable students to:

  • learn within a coherent and exciting framework which does not limit students ambitions.
  • develop new skills through a variety of interesting contexts to foster enjoyment.
  • develop a rich, deep and secure subject knowledge.
  • understand what they are doing well and how they need to improve.
  • explore the breadth and depth of the national curriculum.
  • build on their understanding of the importance of British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and tolerance and respect.
  • improve their spiritual, social, moral and cultural understanding to develop confidence in their own financial and numerical understanding.

Sparx Maths

“Because the best way to improve maths, is to do maths!”

Sparx maths is an online platform for all Year groups to complete their homework. It uses videos, homework questions, and an overall data-driven approach to provide a personalised classroom learning and homework experience for pupils and insights into their learning for teachers and parents.

The platform covers the entire Maths curriculum and homework will be set each week by class teachers. At least two tasks and a consolidation exercise will be set, which should take students up to one hour to complete.

The tasks set, will cover what has been taught in the previous week and the consolidation task focuses on topics that students found difficult in previous weeks. This cycle allows full consolidation and recap of previous learning in order to continually practise and recall knowledge.

Students should watch the online videos to help with any questions they find difficult and use their Sparx book to write down full working out and answers.

Research has shown that actively working on Sparx for the recommended one hour of homework per week for one whole school year was associated with an increase of almost 30 per cent of a (predicted) GCSE grade.

You can always do more with Sparx. Alongside the compulsory home learning task that is set each week, Sparx Maths offers two additional sets of questions for students to complete – XP Boost and Target. XP Boost questions cover previously taught topics and give students the opportunity to further consolidate their learning.

Learning Cycles

We deliver our curriculum through a learning cycle which aids retrieval – each lesson includes:

  • The drill (revision of the key foundations of Mathematics),
  • Targeted revision (recap of learning taken place over the last few months), 
  • Connect (recap of learning from the previous lesson), 
  • New learning (new concepts), 
  • Practice (including problem solving and reasoning questions to deepen learning) and 
  • The demonstrate (independent practise as to what has been learnt that lesson).

We prioritise chunking new learning so that only 30 minutes of new content a day is taught. We are passionate about reducing cognitive overload for our mathematicians.

121 Tuition

  • Our KS4 students have been allocated 121 tutors online if they are SEND, disadvantaged, or more than 2 expected grades behind target . We are lucky to have a team of talented tutors who are qualified mathematicians and teach our students the topics required based on careful gap analysis.
  • Our tutors use the online programme Learning By Questions which allows continual support as students work through mathematical problems with their tutors.

Link to Specification: Specification: Level 1/2 GCSE (9-1) in Mathematics (pearson.com)

Useful websites: