At Allenbourn Middle School, our overall aim is to create confident and resilient mathematicians who persevere when faced with new challenges and ideas both in and out of the classroom.

To achieve this, our goal is to make maths interesting, relevant and thought provoking. We like our pupils to be excited by hands-on lessons, involving examples of maths in everyday life. Maths teaching has changed recently and, with the new mastery approach, our pupils do not learn methods just by rote, but learn to ‘think mathematically’. This is done by tackling reasoning and commonplace problem solving situations, in order to gain a fuller understanding of the underlying mathematical concepts. This leads to a more secure and broader comprehension of the subject and enables pupils to more easily make links between the topics of number (including calculation), measurement, geometry, ratio, algebra and statistics.

Maths is prevalent across the school, being used and applied in all curriculum subjects to illustrate to students its importance and relevance.

Key Stage 2:

In years five and six, all pupils receive six lessons of maths or arithmetic each week.

In Year 5 and 6, pupils are taught in mixed ability tutor groups.  

For both years, we use the ‘Maths - No Problem!’ scheme of work and materials, based around the Singapore Maths teaching methods. This reinforces our use of resources, problem solving, visual representation of problems and group work to encourage pupil confidence and understanding.

Homework is usually set once a week for Year 5 and twice a week for Year 6. This may take the form of Google Classroom tasks, Hegarty Maths or revision books.

Key Stage 3:

In years seven and eight, all pupils receive four lessons of maths each week. As with key stage two, pupils are set into ability groups which are reviewed periodically and adjusted as appropriate.

Homework is set once a week. Additional tasks, for example personal best booklets, may also be set to consolidate and enhance learning.