The Watermore Way for Maths

At Watermore Primary School, children engage in daily Maths sessions. They are immersed in Mathematical concepts and language throughout sessions. At every stage of the school, children are taught using the Concrete > Pictorial > Abstract process. This allows a fluent understanding of strategies and concepts before using this knowledge to reason and solve problems. 

By carefully interleaving topics and thought-out deliberate questioning, mathematical fields revisited, and links between concepts identified to create fluent, efficient learners that can identify connections between concepts and reason down mathematical lines of enquiry. 

 Every lesson begins with a Do Now activity where children complete work from the previous session, the previous week and the past unit. It enables learning to be recalled, used and committed to long-term memory. It also allows teachers the opportunity to react to teaching from the previous day to eliminate misconceptions or to pre-teach coming learning. 

Children are scaffolded through their learning to ensure understanding and individual level of challenge. Agreed strategies and procedures are taught explicitly through concise modelling following an I Do, We Do, You Do method to ensure accuracy and efficiency. 

Manipulatives, such as Dienes or place value counters, are used habitually to aid in the visualisation of concepts and methods. These initial building blocks are used to develop knowledge into the pictorial stage. Pupils create their depictions displaying their mathematical knowledge. This allows deeper investigation into the procedural steps within a calculation and enables children to self-check for errors. Finally, children move to the abstract phase of learning, where fluency and consistency are honed and tested. Teachers use their own assessments to move children between these phases to ensure that all children understand; within a classroom, you will see children working at different phases on the same taught concept. 

Children use marking stations to gain immediate feedback take genuine ownership of their learning. By self-evaluating and identifying any errors, they become more intuitive learners, it maximises the responsibility for their progression. Maths lessons are constructed to have a low entry point and high ceiling. This means that all children are extended and challenged within each session.