Maths Mastery at the Courtyard

Maths Mastery

Over the past 3 years, Maths teachers at the Courtyard have been working closely with other London schools and the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) in order to learn about and implement “Maths Mastery”.

Maths Mastery has developed in the UK over the last 10 years and is influenced by teaching methods and curriculum design used in Shanghai. It focuses on teaching for deep understanding through carefully sequenced steps.

Maths teachers at the Courtyard attend regular training and collaborate as a department and with other schools to use ideas from Maths Mastery and adapt them to our school. For instance, Maths lessons at the Courtyard include:

• Careful use of questioning to deepen understanding
• Mini whiteboards work to improve assessment for learning, stimulate discussion and encourage students to not be afraid of making mistakes
• True or False questions to encourage students to have a go, stimulate discussion and highlight misconceptions
• Short and varied tasks to boost engagement and encourage students to learn concepts more deeply through variation in methods and representations. Short tasks often also reduce students’ anxiety about completing work
• High levels of student talk through interactive demonstration and discussion
• Personalised work through choices of activities where appropriate, tiered questioning and stretch questions/activities to further deepen student understanding
• Regular use of CPA (concrete, pictorial and abstract) approach - for example through the use of place value blocks and pictorial representations to deepen understanding of place value at Entry Level and through the use of counters and bar models when learning fractions and ratio at all levels
• Use of interleaved starter activities that enable students to build their fluency in key skills and improve their long-term retention of Mathematics