Subject Leader: Jane van der Sterren
Teaching for Mastery
At Sydenham Primary School, we believe that children's chances of succeeding in education and life will be maximised if they develop deep and lasting procedural and conceptual mathematical understanding.
Mastery of mathematics is something that want all pupils to acquire, and continue acquiring, throughout their school lives, and beyond. We use the phrase 'teaching for mastery' to describe a range of elements of classroom practice and school organisation that combine to give pupils the best chances of mastering mathematics.
Mastering maths means acquiring a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject. At any one point in a pupil's journey through school, achieving mastery is taken to mean acquiring a solid enough understanding of the maths that's been taught to enable her / him to move on to more advanced material.
Five Big Ideas in Teaching for Mastery
Coherence: Connecting new ideas to concepts that have already been understood, and ensuring that, once understood and mastered, new ideas are used again in next steps of learning, all steps being small steps.
Representation and Structure: Representations in lessons expose the mathematical structure being taught, the aim being that students can do the maths without recourse to the representation.
Mathematical Thinking: If taught ideas are to be understood deeply, children must have the opportunity to think about them about, reason, and discuss with other pupils.
Fluency: Quick and efficient recall of facts and procedures and the flexibility to move between different contexts and representations of mathematics.
Variation: Varying the way a concept is initially presented to children, by giving examples that display a concept as well as those that don't display it. Also, carefully varying practice questions so that mechanical repetition is avoided and thinking is encouraged.
Power Maths
