VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM VIEWFROMTHE CLASSROOM


an arts council of students, to establish a new approach to learning and lead the crusade to engage children in the arts. This worked so well that the obvious question was ‘why aren’t we doing this inmaths?’


As a result of this, we set up ourMaths Council, run by children to show other children whymaths is vital to real life situations. Themaths council leaders are fromYear 6 with representatives from each year group. Theymeet every other week with amember of staff, their focus is tomake maths relevant and show how it’s used in real life. One activity the council introduced was a bake off. Each child had to weigh out the ingredients and write a recipe for their cake. The recipes were then swapped amongst the class and each child had to use themeasures provided by another student; some cake s weremore successful than others.What wasmost interesting was the discussion afterwards about whatmeasures worked best; what was toomuch, too little or not cooked for long enough. Ourmaths council now creates lots of problemsolving activities to bring maths to the front ofmind across the curriculum. Another activity was seeing which of the four school houses could walk the distance of Hadrian’sWall, purely based on the school’s name.We worked out the distances and every Fridaymorning between 8:30amand 8:50am, the children walk around the school playing field track and recording their distances.


We also revamped our ‘enterprise’ initiative. Previously, classes had raisedmoney for a chosen charity by running stalls at different school events. Over the years (with increasing curriculum pressures) this has becomemore andmore adult led.We took out the adult and put the focus back on the children. The budgets (completed


by children), check receipts, Maths Council now take in


and even work as secret shoppers tomake sure that children are on the tills and giving out the correct change .


Aside fromtheM aths Councilwhat othe r initiatives have you introduced?


Aside from the Maths Council what other initiatives have you introduced?


We’ve worked to embedmaths across the curriculumincluding ‘Maths with Orienteering’. We have a very successful orienteering teamand the whole school regularly gets a chance to learn the skills.We had a world champion come to visit the school and discuss with the children all the different waysmaths is used: such asmeasuring and comparing speeds.


It’s good news that your students have thrived butwhat about thosewhomay find it a little harder t o grasp ?


Like any school, we also have children who are more reluctant at engaging withmaths activities. For these students, we set up a group of ‘maths motivators’: year 5 children supported byMarion Auker, our deputy head.


These children go into younger classes to help the children withmaths problemsolving activities; they feel empowered to be supporting these children, which in turnmakesmaths successful for everyone. Our ‘mathsmotivators’ are not il


necessar y ourmos a emathematicians; they are children who understand the importance of determination and learning throughmistakes.We train themto use problemsolvingmaths activities with younger children.We want every child to understand that to be really good atmaths you have to be good at learning fromyourmistakes.


t bl


Can you pick one of your highlights? InMarch 2018 we heard about the UKMatific Maths Games competition.Matific is an online resource aligned to themaths curriculum.What was particularly interesting for us was that its activities were all based on a problemsolving


Can you pick one of your highlights? Decemb e r 2019 2019 www.


It’s good news that your students have thrived but what about those who may find it a little harder to grasp?


The ‘mathsmotivators’ are passionate about their responsibility, often giving up their lunch and break times to support younger children.


What response are you getting fromyour parents?


Parents are also keymotivators for thei We regularly invite themin to the scho about how to build understanding in


What response are you getting from your parents?


ol to learn r children.


mathematics.We encourage themto complete mathematical tasks as part of everyday life by integrating themseamlessly into every day life, rather than treating themas a chore to be done separately. For example, children thoroughly enjoy helping tomeasure ingredients and bake, to time the cooking, and set the temperature on the oven. We also offer help to parents of children further up the school.


We havemany very supportive parents but we are constantly looking at ways to increase engagement. Some of our parents didn’t enjo y school and so don’t engage with being back in the classroom. As a result, we have been inventive in how we run our education sessions.We find that our Year 5 ‘mathsmotivators’ can reach parents in a way that teachers sometimes can’t. They run different events through the year; the most successful of these included using our confident childmathematicians to explain their understanding behind themethods to our parents. This nowmeans that our Quiz nights have a round entitled ‘are you smarter than a 10 year old’ complete with a child-ledMaths lesson !


think of suitable cha towards teaching in approach tomaths.


llenges and activities tomeet this way it is often hard to While we valued themove


the requirements of the national curriculum.We recognised thatMatific was an ideal way to consolidate our teaching and entered the competition. Our children were somotivated to complete the activities that they were asking to come in at lunch and play so that they could do moremaths.


Somuch so that we were not only the over-all national winner but also walked away with an unprecedented number of class and student prizes!


We continued this with our own annualMaths Magician competition for each year group, which includes two elements, quick recall of facts, and problemsolving. Heats are held in classrooms and we invite parents to the finals, which are watched by the whole school.


To help children learn their timestables w e introduced the Golden Test; children have to answer one hundredmixedmultiplication


questions in fiveminutes and score aminimumof 97 correct to win the ‘golden pass’.


Our new focus onmaths has been in place for about two years now and it really doesmake a difference.We’vemoved away frommaths just being a lesson towards a real conscious effort to bring it into everythi provides us withmo alsomakes itmore r


eal. The results are clear as we re time to exploremaths but ng we do. This not only


have achieved a 21 per cent improvement in maths in our year 6 SATs progressmeasure. Aside fromthis quantitativemeasure of success, we have also noticed a significant and positive change in the day to day attitude of the children towardsmaths.


https://www.hadrianacademy.co.uk/ k/ wwweducation-today.co.uk.co.uk 71


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48