Mathematics
Our Maths curriculum has been designed to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum whilst incorporating the school’s academic approach. Our aim is to provide engaging and challenging lessons that are fun, interactive and relevant to the children’s lives. We want pupils to understand how integral mathematics is to their everyday world, from using money to digital devices. We try to treat Maths as a series of puzzles and problems to be investigated and solved. We aim to stimulate in pupils a fascination and understanding of mathematics by firing their imagination.
'There should be no such thing as boring mathematics.'
Edsger Dijkstra
Mathematics in Small Classes
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Although students immensely benefit from smaller classes in all subjects, nowhere is this more true than in Maths. Most Maths lessons follow a combination of whole class teaching and individual guidance. Providing individual support and attention to pupils is essential to their success in Maths as each child invariably requires different levels of assistance, whether they need further stretching and challenges or they need reassurance that they are working in the right direction.
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Mathematics should be a tool for increasing one's thinking power, applying logic to reasoned arguments in order to make informed decisions. The decisions could be answers to problem solving, practical situations, or modelling real situations.
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Mathematics links well with other subject areas in our school. Cross curricular links include map work and analysing surveys with geography, tessellations and patterns by artists such as Escher in art, and numerous links with science, including standard form, compound measures, using formulae and writing equations for chemistry.
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In Year 10 most pupils will sit the foundation Maths GCSE exam before going onto taking the higher Maths GCSE in Year 11.
Also See
Lower Primary Maths
The exciting world of number exploration leads us to 'juggling numbers'. Learning to be creative and relaxed when it comes to numeracy sets a fantasic and solid foundation ready for the next stages ahead.
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Lower primary class use a wide range of equipment and resources whilst exploring calculation, counting, ordering and sorting. We play darts, spin the roulette wheel, tumble the bingo balls, count buttons and ping the ball around the 'Bagatelle' table. Anything we can find to work with numbers in a practical and energetic manner is the best!
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The children are encouraged to set their own tasks during most lessons and will work to the level they feel comfortable at. Some choose to 'walk', others take a 'jog' and those feeling like extending themselves take a 'sprint'. Working independently gives the children that much needed confidence in themselves and encourages that feeling of being sucessful no matter what level they are at.
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Upper Primary & Secondary Maths
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Students in Upper Primary secure previous knowledge and look to make progress using skills already learnt, together with as much of a hands on logical approach as possible. This may involve games, cutting and sticking, problem solving - a lot of work is on individual whiteboards when new ideas are introduced. Whiteboards encourage students to write answers in the knowledge that it is ok to make errors - we just rub them out and try again.
Students continue working with Mymaths online, the textbooks linking in with this. Lessons and homework are used to try and promote confidence mathematically, in a relaxed way, whilst increasing skills and knowledge in order to solve problems. Independent work is encouraged, but good communication skills are needed to explain our work to each other verbally, and in the written form.
The same vocabulary met in Upper Primary are used in Secondary lessons. There is a consistency of approach across our ages, although individuals are able to choose which methods suit them best. Topics are revisited, but then extended. The level of understanding shown helps determine whether students sit the Foundation or Higher GCSE examination. Our flexibility here may result in some students sitting their GCSE before reaching Year 11. We had one student study for FSMQ with us, which is a further maths qualification.
