Mathematics

What we say about Maths at Dean Bank Primary School

Riley – I enjoy using the objects to help me find my answers.
Libby – I like the challenges and being able to use maths outside of school.
Grace – I like having answers to recall.

Our Intent

At Dean Bank Primary School, we aim to inspire all children to reach their full academic potential and we believe that it is vital that a positive attitude towards mathematics is encouraged amongst all of our pupils in order to foster confidence and achievement in a skill that is essential in our society. We believe all children can achieve in mathematics, and teach for secure and deep understanding of mathematical concepts through manageable steps. We use mistakes and misconceptions as an essential part of learning and provide challenge through rich and sophisticated problems.

At our school, the majority of children will be taught the content from their year group only in order that they make genuine progress and avoid gaps in their understanding that provide barriers to learning as they move through education. They will spend time becoming true masters of content, applying and being creative with new knowledge in multiple ways. In mathematics this means ensuring a curriculum that is fully inclusive and aims for of all pupils to:

• become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics so that they develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
• be able to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of problems with increasing sophistication, including in unfamiliar contexts and to model real-life scenarios
• reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry and develop and present a justification, argument or proof using mathematical language.
• have an appreciation of number and number operations, which enables mental calculations and written procedures to be performed efficiently, fluently and accurately to be successful in mathematics.

In addition to the National Curriculum for Mathematics, elements of the Mastery approach, in conjunction with White Rose Maths, are used as the basis for the teaching of maths across school. The decision to use this approach was based on the school’s need to further develop pupil’s problem-solving skills and reasoning. It is also recognised that a high proportion of pupils enter school with mathematical skills that are below and well below average. For this reason, the maths curriculum is also heavily focused on developing basic understanding of number, fluency of factual recall and fluency of mathematical procedures. It is also recognised that children have only a limited mathematical vocabulary and, because of this, its development is prioritised in the Early Years and across the school. Through mathematical talk, children will develop the ability to articulate, discuss and explain their thinking. Children are encouraged to spot patterns, make connections and use mathematical language to justify their views. We will provide the children with the necessary resources to allow all children to access the curriculum and encourage them to use this where appropriate to explain their thinking and reasoning.

Children are taught maths each day with a focus on developing their mathematical knowledge and problem-solving and reasoning skills. We also have additional sessions throughout the week to focus on developing fluency of understanding of the times tables that children are expected to know for their year group:

Year 2: 2x, 5x, 10x
Year 3: 3x, 4x, 8x
Year 4: 6x, 7x, 9x, 11x, 12x
Year 5: All x and ÷ facts (12×12)
Year 6: All x and ÷ facts (12×12)

To support and encourage pupils to learn their times tables, we use Times Tables Rock Stars as a motivational learning tool which children have access to in school and can also use at home. Class teachers will provide login details and further information to support children with this.

Mathematics Policy
Calculation Policy

Long Term Plans

You can view our long term maths plans to see what is taught in each year group;

Year 1 – 2020-21
Year 2 – 2020-21
Year 3 – 2020-21
Year 4 -2020-21
Year 5 – 2020-2021
Year 6 – 2020-21

Maths in Action at Dean Bank 2021-22

It was great to see some of the Y4 children working hard and having fun at multiplication club. Keep up the good effort you’re putting in to learning your times tables! 

Durham Schools Times Tables Rockstars Tournament (April 2022)

Beginning to understand division

When we first introduce new concepts in maths, we spend a lot of time using concrete and pictorial resources to help the children to develop their understanding. They spend time focusing on developing these concepts through practical activities before moving onto solving calculations without the aid of this support.

January 2022 – Mastering Number Project

Our school is taking part in a national project that aims to improve the development of good number sense for all children from Reception through to Year 1 and Year 2.

Part of the programme is taught with the use of rekenreks which help the children develop confidence and fluency with number. They have made a great start in their lessons and are enjoying getting used to using them.

Autumn 2021 – TT Rockstars Tournament

Well done to all the children who took part in the TTRS tournament as part of Maths Week England and congratulations to our class leaders!

Oct 2021 – Y5 Roman Numerals

As part of their work on place value, Year 5 also looked at Roman numerals and completed some investigations to apply their knowledge.

Oct 2021 – Y2 addition and subtraction

Children in Y2 are beginning to use more formal methods for addition and subtraction. The first step to help them achieve this is to use the Base 10 equipment to represent the calculations and support the children with their working out.

Maths in Action at Dean Bank 2020-21

Place value

All children have been working hard to develop their knowledge and understanding of place value as this is vital to help them with other areas of maths. Some having been using manipulatives and looking at different representations of number to help them do this.

Year 1 made fruit salads. As we cut the fruit we talked about how many groups or pieces we were making and whether we were making halves or quarters. Some children noticed that some fruit had not been cut exactly in half, as the two parts were not equal.

Phoebe: “I’ve cut this in 4 bits…that means that I’ve got quarters”

Lilly-May: “This is in half cos I’ve got two pieces now, and they’re the same size.”

Oliver: “That’s in half, one for me, one for you.”

As part of our food technology week, children in Y2 enjoyed practising their measuring skills to help them make smoothies.

Outdoor Maths

Where possible, we try to make use of our outdoor space to support children with their learning. Children in Y2 have been focusing on developing their use of vocabulary related to position and direction by guiding each other on specific routes.

Captain Tom Day

Our school celebrated Captain Sir Tom’s life and honoured his memory by taking part in a maths Captain Tom 100. The children worked together to solve maths challenges based around the number 100 whilst reflecting on Captain Tom as an inspirational man for his amazing fundraising work during the pandemic. Here are some examples of the children’s hard work.

Year 1: The children had fun throwing 10 groups of 10 beanbags into a hoop then counted in 10s to reach 100.

Year 4: Our challenge was to use objects to estimate 100 grams. The person who got the closest won. We also played a game with length where we had to try to find something that measures closest to 100cm.

Year 6: Using exactly four 5s and any mathematical operation, we were challenged to see how many ways we could make 100.

World Maths Day

TTRS Round 2

Congratulations to everyone who took part in Round 2 of the Top of the Rocks competition. Our school finished the competition in 6th place out of 16 schools, with Y6 taking 7th place overall for the average scores. However, when you look at the total scores, we finished in 5th place, with Y6 taking 3rd place. Excellent results and a great end to lockdown learning!

White Rose Maths 

White Rose Maths Friday Problems of the Week in partnership with @bbcbitesize are online now!

👉 http://ow.ly/sik050DJAnh

Times Tables Rockstars

Congratulations to Y6 for taking 4th place in the Durham Primary Schools TTRS Tournament (10-12 February). This is a fantastic achievement, especially as there was a total of 37 classes involved in the tournament.

Well done to all the children who took part and helped our school to take 5th place overall. The children with the top three highest scores in each school will all receive a certificate so huge congratulations to:

Lucas (Y6) who achieved a score of 12,650
Alfie (Y3) with a score of 5130
Julia (Y6) who scored 4322

Alfie has done really well to achieve that high score and be up amongst the Y6 children. I’m also really impressed with Alitheia for your leading score in Y5; Maja who has led Y4 throughout the tournament; and Aleaha for your hard work representing Y2. Well done everyone!

Lockdown Learning

Children in Y3 were challenged to apply their knowledge of money to real life contexts. Alfie used different websites to find accurate prices of products, including the Vue cinema for his cinema word problem; Asda to plan his week’s shopping and the Trainline to plan his family’s trip to York. Harlie created her own word problems with the shopping list and Amelia also created her own problems and used money to help her solve them.

Representing fractions using pictures.

Using sweets to represent groups

Reception children are working hard on their counting and number formation skills.

Reception children are working hard on their counting and number formation skills.

Y5 learning about fractions and money in their recent work at home and in school. 

Daniel’s having fun reinforcing last week’s maths work as he puts his playdough hearts into equal groups. Good thinking!  

Children who are currently working in school are following the same lessons planned by teachers for home learning. I caught these pupils working really hard in their maths lessons yesterday and know that many of you are doing the same at home. Please get in touch with Mrs Kirkwood or your child’s class teacher if you have any questions about maths or the different strategies and methods we use. I know some of the newer calculation methods are unfamiliar to parents and can be very confusing.  

Maths Week England

Maths Week England took place from November 9th – 14th. Throughout the week, children took part in a variety of activities designed to encourage them to have a positive image of mathematics either by helping them to understand the importance of it in our lives or by seeing that maths can be fun. Some of these included maths golf; active maths; working as shape detectives; and exploring tangrams. Children also learnt about the significant role that maths plays in various jobs.

TTRS Tournament

Children from Y2-Y6 took part in the Time Tables Rockstars Tournament throughout Maths Week England.
Congratulations to Y6 for ending the tournament at the top of the school leaderboard! All of the children who participated throughout the week worked really hard. Well done in particular to those who gained the highest scores in each class at the close of the tournament:

Y2 Owen 838
Y3 Alfie 2,353
Y4 Maja 5,595
Y5 Alitheia 5,111
Y6 Lucas 17,064 

Active Maths

Maths is taught in a variety of ways across school. Where appropriate, we’re beginning to teach active maths lessons to help to improve children’s attitudes and attainment in maths, whilst also increasing levels of physical activity.

This helps to motivate all children, increase their interest in maths and encourage problem solving and communication skills between pupils.

Concrete Resources

We encourage the use of concrete resources across all year groups in maths.   We provide a range of objects or physical resources that children can handle and manipulate to aid their understanding of different maths concepts.

Some children in Y2 have been using the Base 10 equipment to help them add 2-digits and 1-digit. The resources help them to understand that ten ones are the same as one ten which supports them when crossing the ten with addition. They were really confident with this and some were able to move onto using this knowledge with a written method. 

Working Walls

Each class has a working wall which is an interactive maths display used to support teaching and record progression in learning.  They highlight key mathematical language and show the main teaching points for specific blocks of learning.

Useful Websites

KS1
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Search.aspx?Subject=16&AgeGroup=2
http://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks1numeracy.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zjxhfg8
https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ks1-maths/zhng7nb
https://ttrockstars.com(Y2 only)

KS2
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Search.aspx?Subject=16&AgeGroup=3
http://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks2numeracy.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/z826n39
https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ks2-maths/zm9my9q
https://ttrockstars.com