How To Maximise Your Arithmetic Score By Getting The Basics Right

Hi there and welcome to Third Space Masterclass webinar where I'll be giving you the tips that I use at my brilliant school at Parklands. How to maximise your arithmetic score by getting the basics right and allowing more children to achieve age related expectations. I'm Chris Dyson, head teacher at Parklands Primary School up in Leeds. We're situated on one of Europe's largest council estates in Seacroft. We are classed as the most deprived primary school in Leeds with 82% pupil premium children. But we don't use that as an excuse, we don't use that for a barrier to learning because we strive to get the very, very best out of our pupils so they can maximise the potential and make a real difference in life when they get older. The background my school is that I've been fortunate and lucky enough to be headteacher there for the last three and a half years. When I took over the school, there'd been an unprecedented 150, and you heard that right, 150 exclusions. In the previous calendar year, there'd been five different head teachers which had five different behaviour policies, which had five different ways of doing things. The children, the teachers, the teaching assistants, the parents didn't know where the expectations were. Behaviour, as you can quite imagine, was inadequate. And the local authority put the school into the category of inadequate, which I used to my full advantage because it basically got me a free 20 days training from the local authority to be able to develop my staff and things. When I started school, I had so many children that thought playing on the roof was the best lesson in the world. And I remember going to visit back in July and you'd have children up on the roof and below them you'd have the head teacher, the deputy head teacher, two behaviour support workers, someone from the authority, just following them round. So I knew we had to change the ethos of the school. We had to get children loving school coming into school and it was the same staff that the authority had been put in it as inadequate, that three and a half years later, in September, this year was the first school and in the country to have an Ofsted visit. And when the report came out in October, we had a total turnaround and we became outstanding. And one of the reasons why we became outstanding was because we put the fun back into what we like to call the fun palace at Parklands. We played music up and down the corridors so when visitors came in, they had smiles on their faces. Children would walk down the corridor singing along to whatever was on the playlist it made people want to come into school. Our attendance went from 89% up to 90, almost 97% because children loved coming into school. Now, around the country, I've been influenced by some fantastic schools that excel in reading, excel in writing, but not a lot of schools have maths as the main focus. Now, I was a maths teacher and one of the things I did as a maths teacher was I like the competition, I like things being right, wrong. Putting the element of times tables in number, bonds bringing into an assembly, celebrating, and the staff have come along on board on that. And we're now one of the best performing schools in the country. If we look at our ASP data from the end of last year, you'll see that our progress is off the scale. A progress score of 8.47 and that includes three children that we're allowed now to take off the data, which means when the validated ASP comes out, we'll see that 8.47 move to 11, which makes Parklands in Seacroft the single highest performing school in the entire country. And that's not bad given 82% pupil premium and the circumstances and the lives that these children have. If you've got a dream and you've got a belief, anything and high expectations, anything can be possible. It's not just been a one year wonder. For the last two years, as you see, we've been significantly above the national schools and the top 1% of schools in the country. And we're going to do this again this May next May, the May after, and when next year we see the introduction of the times tables assessments in year four, we will excel in that. So the tips that I'm going to give you today is how we've achieved the mental maths and the arithmetic aspect. If you get your arithmetic right, then it leads to success. If you look at our 33 children in year six last year, 25 children only dropped one mark between them. One mark they dropped. That means on the reasoning paper, which is more challenging? These arithmetic marks can offset the lower scores that we see on those papers. And indeed, out of the 33 children who got age related expectations, only two children didn't get greater depth. And if we look at our greater depth figure, 63.2% of our children at Parkland's last year were deemed greater depth or gifted and talented in maths. And when you compare this to national figures, Parklands was practically three times higher than the national figure. And again, it all comes down to the tips that we're going to share today on that arithmetic paper. If we look at our average scale score last year, 109.1, bearing in mind that 100 is where we're supposed to be at 110 is deemed as greater depth. Our average again is one of the highest in the country of all the schools. So the arithmetic for age related expectation of greater depth is essential. And it's so straightforward what we can do. Now. It's easy enough to put a whole school approach in from September, but we've still got time to make an impact on this May's results. Now the tips is what we don't do at Parklands is we don't over test. I've been in schools where on Monday they do a reading test, on Tuesday, do the maths paper, one on Wednesday, do the spag test, on Thursday they'll do a reasoning paper, on Friday they'll do a second reasoning paper. And this starts from basically end of December all the way through January, February, March, April, May, and it's boring. Children are not going to get success by just doing test after test after test because if they can't do it on a Monday, they can't do it on a Tuesday and they can't do it on a Wednesday. We need to have these concepts taught to the children to close the gap and to make them a success. Technique is all it takes using two basic things. One, the early bird maths and two, homework which is bespoke to each individual child. So 15 minutes a day can keep your ASP at bay. This can start from tomorrow and it guarantees 100% to work. If we do 15 minutes from tomorrow every day on these early bird questions, which I'll be coming through on the later slides. And then you spend five minutes quickly going through and marking them. You're not going to go through every single question. Spending an hour, just five simple minutes gives you 15 weeks for five days, 20 minutes a day, 100 minutes a week, times that by 15, basically gives you 1500 minutes. Divide that by 60 and you've got 25 hours extra maths before the SATs. And that's in addition to the maths that you'll be doing later on in the day as well. So the first thing we need to be doing is meeting with the teaching assistants, plus the teaching assistants from other year groups who are coming in for SATs weeks. At Parklands we've already started so the teaching assistants are going to be working with the children already spend an hour a day now with the year six children to get familiar with the children and they can get familiar with the teacher assistant. So it's not a total stranger, it's nothing different. It's part of the normal classroom routine. We're going to split the children now in stats week. They're going to be setting rules, so get your desks into rows now. At Parklands we have our gifted and talented children on this side, followed by our children that are safe in here. And by safe I mean they're not going to get greater depth, but they're not a concern, not to achieve age related expectations. We've got our special needs children over here and we've got what we call our vulnerable children here. These are the essential children to be working with. The special needs children are still learning, they're still doing IEP work. They might be on tablets, they might be on other electronic devices, they might be doing whatever, but it's the vulnerable children knowing the children that you're going to be working with and work with those children from now. So we've talked about using other teaching assistants straight away to get them familiar with the children, get making notes. Communication is key. Who needs precise teaching? Which children need to go through long multiplication? Which children need to go through fractions? Which children need to go through decimals. And then what we want to be doing is sending bespoke, individual personal homework home to these children to reinforce their misconceptions. What I don't like seeing schools, but I know it does happen is when schools send home as homework past papers. Now if you're playing in a football team and you've got a problem heading a football, the entire squad doesn't do heading practice. You may be taken to one side with the coach and just that person who needs the heading practice gets that one to one that coaching. And it's the same with homework. If a child, not everybody's got an issue with decimals, so why are we sending decimals home for everybody? So you should have a group that's doing this homework, a group that's doing that homework, a group that's doing this. And for the children that are getting 100% in the arithmetic, then they can be using more reasoning, homework and such. And again as teachers, as teaching assistants, we're smiling, we're encouraging, we're reinforcing and we're making SATs, making sure that SATs week is a pleasurable experience to celebrate the learning that they've done throughout their school life. It's not to be used as anxiety, as stress levels. Well being for children we don't want to be putting all this pressure on it. It sats it. Oh, you've only got one chance. Don't let me down. Don't let your school down. Don't let yourself down. Don't let your par. It's a celebration, okay? So that's what we want to be encouraging, want to be smiling. So when it comes to SATs weeks, it's no different to any other week that they've actually been doing. So these are the simple techniques, even now, how we can maximize our arithmetic score. Quite simply, we're not just doing tests. Okay, we're looking at week one, and you take the 2017 paper, one arithmetic paper. And what we do in week one is we're just looking at question one to question seven. And what we're basically doing is we're looking at question one, and we're going to repeat it three times. We're going to look at question two and repeat it three times. Question three, repeat it three times. So we end up with 21 questions. And these questions are going to be done on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday and Friday. Now, you might find on Monday, some of the children only get five of the questions done, but by them reinforcing and redoing and practice, and practice and practice. By the time it comes to Wednesday, they're doing 10, and by the time it comes to Friday, they're doing all 21 questions. And with success, if a child's getting question 4, 5, and 6 wrong every single day, that's the perfect tool to be sending home for their homework. Okay, so you're matching the homework to their need and using your teaching assistants through precise teaching to look at those concepts. So if we look at Last year's maths paper, one, we're looking at question one, which is 40, add a thousand. So we repeat that question, just changing the digits. So the child's doing them repetitive, doing them repetitively. They're reinforcing and they're getting used to the strategy. So we're looking at question four, which is question two for last year, and it's 707, 18, 18. And then we reinforce them by adding 807 and then 907. If children are struggling with these after day one, that's where the support's going to go. You can have a teacher assistant going, oh, are you going to use jottings? Oh, look, your columns aren't lined up. Okay, so it's knowing the children and knowing the gaps which we need to fill. Question three, last Year was four sixths, add three sixths. So we're doing this question, we're showing them how to simplify the answer, and then we're repeating it on question 8 and 9 all the way through until you've got up to question seven and you've ended up with a bank of 21 questions, then you've saved it. And this could be used the following year. It can be used as early bird anytime that you like. On Tuesday's slide, we're just changing these digits again. So the children are reinforcing the same questions for a full week, week. And again, minimum. It's minimum work for a teacher with maximum results. The confidence that the children get by Friday when they score in practically 21 out of 21 is absolutely awe inspiring. So we're looking at week two where we're looking at questions eight to 14. And again, it's following that exactly the same principles, three questions on each question, giving you 21 questions, one repeating the Monday to Friday. And by doing this in week three and then week four, by the end of week five, you've covered all the arithmetic paper, you've matched the homework to match the need. So the reinforcing at home. And we're not sending home, as I said, test after test that not everybody wants to do, we send in BE support homework and we send in four, five questions for them to do. Because one of the great Ofsted inspectors, Adrian Guy, when he came into our school and did a maths inspection, we were so proud to show him these higher ability children. We were there, he sat there, we passed them these books and he was looking through everything right, everything right, everything right. And I remember him saying to me, this child's got everything right in his book. I remember sitting back thinking, yeah, that shows how brilliant he is. I remember him saying, but we don't want to see that. We want to see children making mistakes, we want to see children challenged. I thought, actually, that's a great point. What's the point if you're getting five questions right, what's the point in seeing them do 60 questions? So, again, sending home a few questions, because if they get five right, that's fantastic. Week six, we tend to then give a paper and we tend to give the 2017 paper, because then the children are familiar with it. We spoon feeding, they're familiar with the layout, the questions, and there's nothing better than a nice confidence booster that when the children have sat this first paper and they get in 80% of it right, 90% of it right, 100% of it. Right. We're taking notes on our vulnerable children all the time, because the vulnerable children in week one might be different to the vulnerable children in week six. We're communicating, teaching assistants to teacher, we're changing the groups, we're changing the roles, we're changing the seating positions and then we're building upon week seven and week eight to questions that have been commonly incorrect. So we're looking at the misconceptions. And then week nine to 15, we're repeating, say, the 2016 paper, some of the sample papers, some of the papers that you can get online and things. So we're reinforcing this. And this isn't part of the maths lesson. This is done in that first 20 minutes to get the bums on seats when they come into class, sit down, get on with these questions, and as I said, this is 25 hours extra maths. That has an absolute amazing impact. Then 11 o', clock, when you're doing your normal maths lesson, that's when you're applying all these skills, all your tables knowledge, or your number bond knowledge, or your fraction knowledge, all these are coming through. Then that can be applied in the reasoning. So all these slides can be adapted and adopted to suit your need and the needs of the school. But it's the routine and the practice that these children need. We turned Early Bird maths into a whole school initiative, where every single day, every child comes into school, whether it's the first day back in September, the last day before Christmas, whether it's on July 18th when we close school down, we all go to Bridlington. They still do the Early Bird maths from year one to year six, each and every day. And the results in three years that I've been at Parklands have been amazing. You've got to know your children. You've got to know which children are the vulnerables. The vulnerable children in week one may well be different to the vulnerable children in week six. We're changing the children all the time and you'll suddenly see, as they get in a real grasp of this arithmetic and they've seen the success, that your grace to depth potential children are growing. And you'll find your vulnerable groups diminishing. Sending home bespoke homework, homework that's individual to that child. As I said, what we don't want to be doing is just sending home past paper after pass paper. These kids are working their socks off. The last thing they want to do when they get home at half past three is to sit down have to do a past paper for homework and then look at your well being as members of staff and as Year six teachers. Do you really tomorrow morning want to be marking 30 reading papers or 30 reasoning papers, or 30 spelling and grammar punctuation papers? No. You've got to keep yourself fresh. So bespoke homework. These children need work on long multiplication. That's what they're doing. Five simple questions using the precision training, using using the written methods. And I've actually done a video on making the best use of your TA to maximise your scores. And by doing the precision training and looking and meeting the needs of these children, it guarantees success. Hope you've enjoyed some of the tips that we use at Parkland's today. And very good luck. And use anything that's going to really stimulate and get the best out of these children.