How to Turn Maths Progress Around in Your School Using Mental Maths

Hi, everyone, I'm Chris Dyson and I'm going to be talking to you today about the use of mental maths and how essential it is to develop fluency and reasoning in children's learning. And I'm the very, very proud headteacher at Parklands Primary School in Seacroft in Leeds. Just to give you a bit of background about the school, we are the most deprived primary school in Leeds with 84% pupil premium money. We've also got, in addition to that, 33% of our children are on the send register for having special needs. I'm due to start my third year as head teacher at this school in September in a week's time. But just a bit of background. Before I started, before I started in the role, there'd been 150 exclusions in 2013-14, which was one of the highest in the country, if not the highest. There was 40% staff mobility, with staff in and out and in and out. But it gives me great pleasure today to say that three years on we've got exclusions down to zero and no staff actually want to leave. In fact, the only problem I've got with staffing at the moment is that with having predominantly young and eager, enthusiastic staff, a lot of them are going on maternity leave. Maternity leave doesn't run simply from September to September, they run from April to February and all funny things like that. So that's been my challenge at the moment. But irrespective of what I've just said about the pupil premium and the deprivation and the high crime on the estate and the special needs, last year we actually achieved the top 1% schools in the country, according to Raise Online and to the new ASP that will be released in October, November this year. So today, going to be sharing what we did, our fantastic school to get maths where it's at now. And quite simply, there'll be three things I'm talking to you about. One, firstly, I'll be speaking to you about the essentialness of early bird maths. This is a really simple way to get an additional 65 hours maths throughout the year in your curriculum times tables, which has always been a big, big, massive passion of mine and I've taken it from every school that I've ever worked in to huge, great effect. And then thirdly, we'll be looking at how we use our same day intervention, where it's the actual teachers that are delivering the interventions as opposed to teaching assistants and the huge impact that that's had before. Finally, looking at our results from the 201617 year and cross referencing back to last year's, well at the end of Key Stage 2. So to start off with, one of the biggest impacts that we had in school was early bird maths prior to going into school. I brought this idea from the other previous school, three schools that I'd actually been in. And basically what had happened at school before I arrived was the children had come into class, they'd have toast delivered, there'd be the networking, there'd be the arguments picked up from last night on the estate, from this morning on the playground, and it was taking the class teacher till about quarter past nine to get the children ready for learning. Now, in a nice lovely way, what I was looking for for the children was bums on seats. I wanted the children coming in school on time at 10 to 9, sitting down in the chairs and having a set of maths questions up on the board that were relevant, that would really motivate that the children would want to do as best they actually can. And by doing this for 20 minutes a day, for five days a week, that's extra thousand minutes a week. Times that by 39 school weeks in a year, gives you 3,900 extra minutes of maths. Divide that by 60 and you've got yourself there 65 hours of extra maths just by when the children come in, they're sitting down and they've got something to be getting on with. No networking, just straight into a group. Great. Warm up for maths. Before any PE lesson, the first thing you want the children to do is do stretching, warm up and likewise in maths before starting a new concept that they might not have seen before. It was great for the children to come in, do some maths that they've already done, get the brains worked up, get themselves ready for a day's wonderful learning. So how does early bird maths work? Well, basically they. There are no new concepts taught in this time. So it's not like a diagnostic sort of test where you're looking at what the children know you might be. It's totally up to you how you sort of run with this. You might want to do pick up on work they did last week to reinforce. You might want to start with the times tables, you might want to do number bonds in year six. At our school we use the previous year's arithmetic paper from the SATs. Year 5s and Year 4s tend to use the old mental maths test from before the new curriculum came in. And the art of this is it's Differentiated by outcome. So on the Monday morning when the slides are put up, some of the children might end up doing all 20, some of the children might only be doing 10, some of the children might only get the first four or five done. But by Friday you'll see the children's speed picking up, picking up as they become familiar with the numbers that are going to be sort of asked. So, basically, and I've got some slides to show you here, which hopefully will be available to all you guys out there after. But basically, you put your slide up on a Monday morning and that slide stays the same all week through till Friday. It's just that on Tuesday and Wednesday the digits change. So when the teacher's done it once, it's a week's worth of work. All they've got to do, as I said, is just simply change some of the digits. The only children that don't actually do this early bird maths are the special needs children. And by special needs children, it's children with a specific learning objective in maths, not literacy, not anything else. But if they've got a special needs in maths, then they'll do some reinforcing of the times tables or the number bonds. But we insist, and we encourage the lower ability to also do these questions. And therefore, that's why we're differentiating by outcome. Because now, with looking at progress scores and things, the simple fact is we have got to shift some of these children who might not have achieved in year two. We've got to get some of these children to close the gap and to be successful by the time we get into year six. So here's some examples that we've done in our school. So in year one, and this is taken from round about Christmas time. So obviously, depending on the time of year that we're actually in, depends on the standard of the questions and things. So they may have number 26, where they've got to add 10, they've got to tell me what one more is, they've got to subtract one is 26 odd. Is it even? They've got to count only three and so on. And then on Tuesday, all the teacher's got to simply do is change that 26 to 36 on Wednesday might change to 24, on Thursday might change to 18 and on Friday might give him a challenge and go up to 88 or 98 or something. And then as we progress through, this is an example from year three. So again, the challenge is up there, it's only got the first 11 questions on, because obviously going down to 20, I couldn't get all that onto the screen. But as I said, the children all come in on a Monday and some of the really keen higher ability mathematicians should be able to get through the majority of them. Whereas some other children may just get the first 10 done, some children may be just doing the first three or four. And again, the progression continues. So up into year five, where we've got the lovely old catchphrase up on there, the challenge is always there. And again for the year five teachers, a case of on Tuesday morning and coming in and changing this digit here to 698, this one to 3472, let's have 350 divided by 50, totally up to the teacher. But then as I said, when it's done once, when it's done once, it's then done there as a resource until the goal posts are moved again and then we finally end up, by the time we get to year six, huge, challenging questions. But again, we can't be doing question six, for example, until that has actually been covered in context throughout the lesson and things. So. So basically that is the examples of the, of the early Bird maths that we do every day, 65 hours of extra maths. And when we come to look at the results, you'll see how quick and how fast these children are. In fact, when we start back again in September, you'll find that the current year six, who are just starting now, they've been doing these every day from day one until the last day in July before we finish, they've been doing these questions every single day, which has led to progression, led to continuity, consistency, and we never have a day, even if there's a school trip, where these aren't up on the board. So the children know straight away when they come in, bums on seats, pencils out, then away they go. So that was the first real impact that we had with the early bird maths. Now the second huge impact that we had has to do with times tables, which we celebrate if you follow us on Twitter. We celebrate this with the best seats in the House assembly on a Friday where the times table champions from the class all come out. They get sitting on a lovely comfy sofa which was donated by a lovely business, lovely Domino's sponsor, our pizzas, and they have some ice cold orange juice, it's been in the fridge all day just to show the value. And you can see with the karaoke, which is sang to introduce the children when they come out the entertainment and the love is there from the little ones at the front up to the big year sixes at the back. I'm blessed now that we actually have 60 or 70 parents that turn up weekly just to come and see best seats in the house assembly, which is on a Friday afternoon, 2:15 till 3 o'. Clock. But in all fairness, it could last till 6 o' clock if we wanted it to. The children are welcomed out to the front as their class champion. And here's lovely Tyler. You can see the enjoyment, the love and the children's faces. He comes out to celebrate him being the class champ. Okay. Upon coming out to the front, they're awarded with their class championship certificate laminated, no expense spared there. They get to keep the trophy for the week, to take it home and to celebrate. And it's actually a fantastic whole school community experience that we've got there. How do we get to the standard that we're at now? Because I've got a little video to show you in a few minutes. Basically, when I was just a classroom teacher, I drilled these times tables in a fun game, pick your victim around the world. And I picked up all these sort of times table ideas. So my class, irrespective of whether I took in year three or year six, times tables were just coming out like this. That was picked up upon. And then when I became a maths leader and head of Key Stage 2, it meant that I could then develop and train other teachers in how to do it. And then now I'm a head teacher, it means I could spend my days in year one, all the way through to year six, just sitting out these times tables and said, the results are absolutely amazing. I recently had a headteacher over from Wigan who came across and he sent a lovely email. He actually wrote a lovely blog saying, and when I went around the classes with Chris Dyson, when I went round, I presumed he'd be picking out the same children just to do these times tables. But he said, no matter what class you went in, every single child had these tables just like this. And I said, I started doing it with my class and I took that into the whole school way of doing it by just basically my first day back in 2014, in September, I thought, to get these 150 exclusions down, I got to spend my time in the classrooms. I can do my work in the evening time, but let's get into classes and then just see what the children are enjoying doing. And it might have been I went into year five and said, right, I'M coming in tomorrow to do the six times tables with you. And I started really back at basics, okay? I'd go six and they'd say 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48. And as the week progressed, the pace increased. Then it may have been the following week I went back in and I said, we're going to do them in reverse this time. Or it may have been the third week when I went in and I said, right, I'm going to ask you today. Six eights, six fours, six nines. So the children then had the homework in math. Just do your six times tables, just do your sixes, that's all you've got to do. The success now is that if we go back to year one, this is Tyler classed as special educational needs, but not in maths. And a lot of people sometimes look at special needs children, think they're special needs and everything. He's arguably one of the quickest in the school at all his times tables, all the way up to the 12s. And I know that the curriculum says you shouldn't be doing your 12 times table until you get to year four. Well, if you're good enough and you work hard enough, they can actually do them at any time that they. So please. So the impact of these times tables and as I said, one thing I wanted to do for the well being of staff was I wanted to cut down on marking. I didn't want year sixes coming in on a Monday with this much homework for the teachers to mark. So basically I went to a lot of mental maths for homework. So your six times tables, it might have been times table rock stars, might have been IXL maths, but just something where the children could do it online. And it's done. There's no extra onus on the teachers now we progress from the times tables because when they've got that, we then developed it into number bonds. So simple number bonds at the start. So I might want a number bond to 10, that's 6.8. So you'd want the children saying, it's 3.2. And then you get up to the stage where you might be saying, I want the number bond 7.24, in which case you want the answer 3.76. And these children, when they're practicing, this is their homework, are so keen. And the performance of the boys has just been absolutely amazing, world class. And it's been absolutely a pleasure watching these children. I'll keep going back to the most deprived primary school, you know, in Leeds. If you've got a willingness to learn, you've found a challenge that you want to do. Makes no difference, sort of what the deprived figure is. You want to basically know that you're going to be believed in, you're going to be listened to, you can show off these skills. And as I said, this is why we ended up so successful in our Key Stage 2 assessments last year. And this year I'm now going to show you a little video of it in practice, because I can stand here all day and say, my children are the quickest in the world at times tables, the quickest in the world at number bonds, the quickest in the world at lots of things, but for you to actually experience it and see it for yourself, you'll know what we're talking about and how we celebrate. This BBC breakfast actually came up three weeks ago, just at the end of July, and did a full morning's filming because they couldn't believe the speed of these children. They especially liked how we sort of adapted our times table game again. So if I was asking 6, 8, I wanted the answer 52. Now, I know there'll be people sat at home there thinking, well, 6, 8 is 48, which is very true, but because these children, you couldn't split them anymore, I wanted to put another problem in me. I wanted to do 6, 8, 48. How many more is it for a number bond to 100? So, for example, 6, 8 are 48. So the answer would be 52, because 48 add 52 is 100. 6 times 10. I'd want the answer 46 times 10 is 60. How many more is it to 100? And it's 40. And there's examples for us to see now. So enjoy the clip. Now I'm going to show how brilliant that we are at parklase at our times tables. Now, you're only in year one, but you actually became grand champion at the end of last half term. So I want you to look into the camera and tell me your three, three times table. Right? And now say it to me nice and slowly so people know what you were saying. 8, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30. That is brilliant. Now, do you know what 4 times 3 is? 12 is 5 times 3, easy 15. 9 times 3. E year 27. Wow. How's it feel to be grand champion? Amazing. Yeah. Give us high five now, when you get up to year five, because our year six are residentials, but these two boys are two of our sharpest. We go away from times tables because we do a bit of number bond work as well. But now what we like to do in all key stage two is when I give a times table, for example, 6 times 10. Instead of having the answer 6, 60, we want the answer 40 because I want the answer up to 100. So they've got to do the times table and then subtract it from 100 to give that number bond. So let's have a look then, boys. So six times eight, 52. 12. 12. Minus four. Six sixes. 67. 64. 64. Zoolane, boys. Fantastic. Give us a high five. Oh, and happy birthday. 4.65. 5.35. Yes. 6.34. 3.66. 8.23. Wow. I could watch that all day and all night. And to be fair, I do a lot of time anyway, that's the skills and that's the sort of standard which we've built up. And it hasn't been done through a stick, it's been certainly done through the carrot pizzas, bribery, entertainment. And to see these children's success on the faces is absolutely fantastic. So the third part of the jigsaw, now, how it all comes in together is to do with same day intervention. Now I'm a big believer and I've had people on Twitter before and said, well, what's early bird, all that arithmetic and what's the times table has got anything to do with greater depth reasoning, problem solving? And the answer to that is quite simple and that is for you to move to that fluency, for you move to that greater depth. You've got to have those foundations in here, you've got to have that, you've got to have the basic number facts. If you've got your times tables, works like fractions, division, which are two areas of real concern in maths, become so straightforward and easy, especially fractions, because you've got no remainders. So it was a big belief of me. Before we moved on to the greater depth, before we moved on to other aspects of maths, we had to get these basic numbers in place. And then it came to looking at our same day intervention. Now, this is a basic, rough overview of our school day. So the children in 850 bums on seats. Early bird maths do that till 5 past 9 and then the teachers read out the answer. So again, the markings not there. And the children self assess, they take responsibility for their own learning. Then we'll start a new concept which will be the Teach talk. So it could be on any aspects of maths, shape and space, handling Data, it could be on anything, but we try and keep the teacher talk to a minimum. And then 9:20 to 9:35, the children's understanding of that new concept is tested by a simple couple of tasks. That's not an assessment or anything, but they may have eight questions. Can they successfully apply what they've just heard from the teacher and implement that into their lessons? And then again, 9:35 to 9:40, the teachers will read out all the answers because all the class have been kept together. The special needs will be doing their own special IEP work. But the lower ability, the middle ability and the higher ability have all done these same tasks. Again, differentiate by outcome, because your higher ability may have done the first 12 questions, your middles may have done eight, your ability may have done six. So again, the teacher will read out the answers and then the children will peer mark, self mark. And it develops their own confidence. Anybody can just put, yeah, got them all right. But it's not really telling them that or anything. So we encourage the children, you've got to be honest, because of what's going to happen after assembly. So basically, then, as the children leave the classroom to go to assembly, there's three trays, red, I ain't a clue what's happened. That lesson orange, I only did four, but I think I got. I've got them all right. So I think I'm all right. And greens added up, I did nine out of ten. All right, no problems whatsoever. And then all the children come down to my assembly, which I have in the hall from 9:40 to 10:00'. Clock. But I leave the teachers behind. I leave the teachers in their classroom to be able to mark their books, starting at the reds, then moving to the oranges and the greens may just be a quick scan through and things. And that's one of the great things about the new Ofsted Mythbuster, as it were, where there's no onus on how much works in people's books following a certain mark of feedback policy. As long as it's consistent, we've got independent learners in school now that can take responsibility for their own lessons. So basically the teachers marking all the while I'm doing the assembly. And this is a crucial thing. Now, when the children return back to class at 10 o', clock, between 10 o' clock and 10:30, it's actually the same day interventions delivered by the teacher. Now, historically, when you've got a child who's got an issue in certain aspects of maths, they tend to be sat over in the Corner, maybe a group of them with a teaching assistant. And it's the teaching assistant then that's doing the work there that the teacher with everybody else. Well, this has had a huge impact our school, because now it's the teachers themselves that are delivering this same day intervention. And the teaching assistant, they're walking around looking at the children who's doing the mastery challenge. Because if they've got that concept, if they successfully applied it in these tasks, we don't need to see another 45 questions produced for them or getting them right. We want to see if they can apply it into the context of the next challenge. And a lot of our challenges that we actually use are there to learn through mistakes. Okay, I've just put a couple of examples up of our challenges that the children do. So a three digit number is multiplied by a two digit number and the calculator is written out as shown below. Each Star stands for one digit. And the children have got to use 2, 3, 5 and 7 to mix and match. The only way to get this correct is by learning from a mistake. Okay. And in future episodes I may actually develop these slides further. Another good example of sort of applying the numberphight rule is you have a starting number, you add six to it, times it by five, double it, subtract four, add seven times eight, and so on until they've got their, until they've got their answer. Again, another missing digit question. And it's fantastic for this because there are different ways to multiply four to end up with an answer to. It could be three times four, it could be eight times four. And by putting the numbers in and learning through the mistakes, this is how we're encouraging the children to learn. And then finally, we love the old pyramid challenge. And again, you can make up any rules that you want. Use this. So this same day intervention, as I said, has been absolutely crucial in allowing the teacher to work with the children that need to be worked with, thus closing the gap, giving them extra attention, explaining it, because as you get into year four, five and six, some of these concepts that we're looking at, maths, subject knowledge is essential. And although at Parklands we give the same training opportunities to teaching assistants as well as to teachers, the teacher assistants still aren't the teacher. Okay. So by using the teachers as the main resource in the classroom, really has seen our lowers and middles accelerate their progress. The challenges which higher abilities we've seen is accelerating their learning. And it's been absolutely wonderful to see using this same day intervention. So finally to wrap this up today, we're looking at the results that we've had from this year. 33 children in year six who passed the test. Last year there was 37 in total, but three of the children were in our resource provision unit, which means they taxied in from the authority with exceptionally low levels. But we're a nurturing school as well. And another child on the special needs register and out of those 33 children that passed, 25 of them only dropped one mark on the arithmetic paper. On paper one only dropped one mark. Now true, they didn't score as highly on the, on the reasoning papers, but if you get, if you're dropping one mark on paper one, you can afford to not score as highly on the other ones. Most significantly, only two children who got the expected standard didn't get greater depth, which meant that 31 out of 33 ended up with greater depth who passed it. And then last year actually, so I was in the top 1% of schools in the country for maths. And although the final data is not out with the national and such at the time of filming, it will be the same this year because the scores have improved even more than last year's record breaking scores. So if we look at our greater depth, we ended up with 63.2% of our children gaining greater depth compared to 23, 22.5, 23% nationally and Leeds at 20%. So this was all the applying all those basic number facts, all those things that we take for granted, you know, it was essential and we've still got. Last year was very, very successful but this year we've extended that and we're fully expecting to do the same again this year. When you look at our average scaled score, and this is taken from something called Perspective Light which looks at all the data in Leeds in July as an early analysis, you'll see our scaled score is unprecedented at 109.1. And looking at last year's figures in 2016, I think 108 was the highest score in the country. So to be scoring 109.1. And again I come back to it ain't no barrier. If you're in deprived school with special needs children, you give them those tools to learn and that belief to actually succeed. And then looking at our overall progress score in maths, lot of schools if they score zero, well that's where you should be. Your scores are one, two, fantastic where hitting high grounds with eight. Okay, so a progress score of eight, which is testimony to the hard work the children do the brilliant work which the members of staff do always want to embrace new initiatives like we're going to be able to see on all these webinars that are being put together this week. And that's basically the celebration of Parklands Primary School. That's our Parklands Primary School special events links with all our television footage on and helicopter rides for impressing the country on our times tables. So, for me, Chris Tyson, it's been an absolute pleasure. Any questions, you can email or tweet me or contact Third Space Learning.