Maths at Pond Meadow

At Pond Meadow, we recognise that providing a functional maths curriculum underpinned by the repetition of keys skills in different contexts is vital to our students making purposeful progress in maths. We deliver this in a hybrid approach, catered specifically to our students needs and aspirations.

Each maths lesson will look different in each class, but in our ASD classes each will have a concrete, pictorial, and abstract element to it (CPA). Concrete resources underpin every student’s understanding to the mathematical processes behind the operations. Using dienes, for example, to understand the process of exchanging or comparing values of numbers using place value columns.

We then move to the use of pictorials, this is the representation of the concrete resources in picture form. This is a key concept because it allows our students to develop their unitisation skills, which is assigning value to an object. For example, a multi-link cube being worth 1, or a single orange being worth 1. By introducing variation to the student’s unitisation skills, it allows students to use their maths skills in a range of functional settings, such as in shops and restaurants.

The abstract element is then introduced to the students, which would be a calculation such as 5+5. This allows the students to apply the concrete and pictorial methods they have learnt to solve this calculation. The use of calculations is an abstract concept to a lot of students due to lack of meaning to them. Which is why the concrete and abstract elements of our mathematical teaching is vital.

We use White Rose Maths to support the delivery of our maths lessons. This allows teachers to ensure they are breaking down the steps to success fully and providing lessons which allow for small step progression. In addition to this, it provides a wide range of varied fluency questions and exposes our students to a wide context of mathematical calculations. Which assists in creating more flexible mathematicians.  

Our complex needs students are exposed to maths that allows them to show an awareness of different stimuli and explore them. This links to their communication goals allowing them to communicate their preferences about the range of stimuli they are engaging with through their preferred method of communication. In addition to this, students develop their control of objects and materials to develop fine motor skills in conjunction with maths. We have high aspirations for all learners at Pond Meadow, so problem solving is facilitated and embedded within maths sessions to allow students appropriate response times to foster independence and resilience. We individualise our maths lessons specifically for this group of learners and activities are planned through the sensory curriculum, using teaching methods that encourage the uses of all of their senses to increase engagement.

Intent

• To create a positive attitude around maths
• To create problem solvers
• To create mathematicians confident in an array of contexts
• To create practical and functional maths lessons
• To monitor the progression of students and assess the impact of the curriculum
• To foster a love of problem-solving and resilient learners.

Implementation

• Daily maths sessions up to KS2
• Two maths sessions a week from KS3 to Post-16
• Embedded CPA approach to maths in every lesson in ASD classes
• White Maths Premium Resources used to provide varied fluency, reasoning, and problem-solving calculations
• Students will be presented with a range of different contexts to apply their maths skills 
• All new skills will be explicitly modelled and scaffold by teachers
• New skills will be appropriately broken down into small steps to allow for students to make progress
• Students progress will be monitored each half-term through EFL to allow teachers to adapt their teaching if needed
• Maths opportunities embedded throughout the day
• Staff to display a positive relationship with maths to foster enjoyment and excitement around the curriculum
• Adapted and motivational resources to enable students to engage effectively
• High expectations and aspirations for all students
• Repetition of skills in varied ways

Impact

The approach to maths outlined above will create independent, resilient problem-solvers. Staff will model a positive relationship with maths and create functional and purposeful opportunities for students to make progress and equip of learners with maths skills for life which they can apply in a range of contexts confidently.

We measure the impact of these strategies through rigorous formative assessment on Evidence for Learning (EFL) and measure progress against each student's IEPs. This allows us to ascertain whether we need to adapt and change elements of how we implement our curriculum to provide the best possible impact. Given the nature of our diverse learners, this is something our teaching staff do diligently and this is reflected in the adaptions made in teacher’s planning and through our medium term plans learning outcomes.