By former DfE Assistant Director, Vanessa Pittard A major distinction between primary maths teaching in England and Singapore (and other high performing jurisdictions in the Far East) relates to whole-class (interactive) teaching. In the Far East everyone is taught the same maths together at the same pace, regardless of prior performance or how quickly different […]
Read more By former DfE Assistant Director, Vanessa Pittard I recently led a session with Derbyshire schools on mastery teaching. Derbyshire is a rural county, like many in England. This group of primary headteachers and maths leads included several people from schools with mixed-age classes: a fact of life for many rural schools. No surprise therefore that […]
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Head Teacher of Yarborough Academy, Hannah Albery, shares the journey of changing the maths culture in her school. “…this was mastery, but it also transcended everything. It was just good maths teaching. And, for me, that’s what mastery is. Teaching for understanding. And, that’s what Numicon gives us.” When the new curriculum came into place, […]
Read moreLines, squares or plain? The pages of maths exercise books, I mean. For years I have insisted that pages have to have squares. Without vertical lines as well as horizontal ones how could my students possibly draw all the right-angled triangles and bearing North lines and coordinate axes and so on that I would tell […]
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Christian Bokhove Evidence explained Imagine you are designing a textbook and only at the end you decide to evaluate its effectiveness. This would be a risky thing to do, as it would mean making an enormous investment, without any inkling of ‘whether it works’. This would not be money well spent. During the whole design […]
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By Vanessa Pittard, former Assistant Director at the DfE No single person can take credit for Singapore’s success in the teaching of mathematics, but if I could nominate someone, it would be Berinderjeet Kaur, Professor of Mathematics and Mathematics Education at Singapore’s National Institute of Education. Along with others, I was lucky enough to hear […]
Read more “In order for teachers to develop the confidence to deliver a mastery curriculum we need to empower them to take risks in the classroom.” Rebecca Hamburger explains how to go from teacher to master: All too often when I am delivering whole school CPD, I ask the question: “Who loves maths?” and only a few […]
Read more Vanessa Pittard shares expert advice on how to build firm foundations with mastery. I’d like to suggest that one of the benefits of mastery is the avoidance of misery. I’ll focus on primary maths, but what I write here applies as much at KS4/GCSE as to Key Stage 2. What’s the point of introducing mastery […]
Read moreAs the revision period for the Key Stage 2 SATs is now well underway, Year 6 teacher Sarah Burnham offers a few helpful tips to prepare for the maths tests. Making every minute count Practicing maths facts little and often can be really beneficial in developing fluency. A daily ten minutes focusing on the four […]
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Comprehension can be a thorny topic. It is defined as the ability to read text, process it, and understand its meaning and involves complex cognitive processes. Problems or weaknesses in any of these elements can be a significant barrier to the reader’s understanding. The job of the teacher is to identify which elements their pupils […]
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