Mathematics at Thomas Barnes Primary School

At Thomas Barnes Primary School, we value mathematics. We want our children to understand that maths is essential to everyday life and a necessary life skill. We want our children to grow up with a deep understanding of the subject, applying it to their chosen career paths as accountants, aircraft engineers, teachers, RAF pilots, vets, Formula 1 mechanics and more!

White Rose Maths

White Rose is a systematic, progressive scheme that has been developed by a team of passionate teaching experts who are influenced, inspired and informed by the work of leading researchers and practitioners across the world. The scheme's fundamental belief is that 'everyone can do maths', and it is designed to teach to the 'mastery' of concepts so pupils become confident and resilient mathematicians.

At Thomas Barnes we use White Rose Maths to support our planning and teaching of mathematics throughout school. White Rose is the 'spine' of the our mathematics curriculum. We follow the planning structure, and match our lesson content to the progressive 'small steps' for each topic, (find them below). However, our teachers do not use the provided worksheets - we select which content to use from them and may combine it with resources from other high quality websites. We always aim to provide pupils with enriched, well rounded and stimulating  lessons.

The STAR approach

Show

Try

Apply

Reason

Maths lessons follow the STAR approach. Teachers will show the children the skills needed to complete the main activity. They will present new material in small steps and provide models along with worked examples.

The children will then try to practise a calculation or a problem using the new skills they have learnt. The teacher will give them feedback on how they did.

During the main activity, children will independently apply their knowledge to a range of calculations or problems.

Finally, the children will be expected to solve a reasoning problem to test their logical understanding in a wider context or real world situation.

Teaching for Mastery in KS1

Mastering maths means pupils acquiring a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding. Teaching for mastery means that we need to offer extra sessions over and above our usual lessons to give all of our pupils the best chance of making at least good progress through our curriculum.

At Thomas Barnes, we use the National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics (NCETM) programme to enable our Key Stage 1 pupils to achieve mastery. We want them to acquire a solid enough understanding of the maths that’s been taught to enable them to move on to more advanced material and be more confident in their lessons.

During a week there are 4 sessions for each year group in KS1, each lasting around 15 minutes. Miss Britnell teaches Year 2 and Mrs Phillips or Mr Reilly teach Year 1. 

The NCETM curriculum is split into a 3 areas – we call these ‘spines’.

Spine 1: Number, Addition and Subtraction, 

Spine 2: Multiplication and Division 

Spine 3: Fractions.

Each spine is composed of a number of segments. See below for the teaching sequence for these segments across the three spines.