Planning for Mastery in Year 6

Hi, I'm Rebecca and in this film we're going to look at how to plan for mastery in year six. Now I'm primary school teacher and maths lead at primary school in Gosport and I also run a part time independent teaching and learning consultancy. So what does maths mastery look like? Well, for a child to have mastered maths, they, they need to be able to show fluency and that they can apply their fluency skills to any problem. They need to be able to represent maths in lots of different ways, they need to have mathematical language to communicate their related ideas and they need to independently apply their knowledge to an unfamiliar problem. What does that look like for year six? Well, for year six children, not only do they need to master a very complex curriculum, but they've also got to pass the SATs test. So we need to work on how we can equip them to be able to do that. So let's see how we can do it. To teach maths mastery, you need to follow this cycle at all times. When introducing a concept, pupils need to be able to explore an idea in lots of different ways and all the time assessing their understanding as you go. They need to be able to clarify and you need to clarify their ideas for them through modelling and making sure that they really understand new concepts. They need to have that time to practice, that's really fundamental and then they must be able to apply their knowledge in lots of different problem solving ways. So let's start with the fluency. Now for Year 6 pupils, the biggest thing with the fluency is that they have to take the arithmetic test in the sats. So the areas that you really want to focus on in your planet in for year six are times tables, four operations, obviously fractions, decimals and percentages and place value. And pupils need to be able to become really fluent in all of those areas to be able to work with the complex demands of the curriculum and be able to take the test. And we know that the higher the scores they get in the arithmetic test, the more chance they have of making age related expectations. From my experience, pupils that get better arithmetic scores also become more confident in their maths and, and then they really get to grips with it and then their self esteem grows as well. So how can we do that? Well, by introducing some sort of daily mastery time is one of the best ways to build fluency in arithmetic. And here is an example of two resources that you could use to build fluency with your pupils using arithmetic skills. So here we have two Third, space learning Resources that are very useful. They're called Fluent in five, and they are basically a set of questions that children can do every single day to practice their skills. As you teach more arithmetic skills throughout the year, you can introduce those into the daily practice, but make sure that you repeat skills that they've already been taught. So here, this is a year six one that just gives you a few questions every single day that you can give to your class, Go through the answers as a class, address any misconceptions, and constantly assessing who can do what to then work out any children that need extra intervention for SEN pupils or pupils who are off track. They also have some really good resources for mental calculations. And if you've got children that are off track, I would say to really focus on making links and mental calculations first. Although this is based on year four, this is a really useful tool to use for Year 6 pupils that aren't quite there or can't make the links because they have to look at the calculations, work out whether they can do it as a mental method or a written method. And you can share different ways of solving the problems. And the more they do that, the more fluent they become and they will make more links without you needing to help them. So that's one really good way. It's a really good idea if you're doing fluency every day, to have a set time when you do it. And in my class, I always have different activities on different dates for different pupils. They're still practicing their target areas, but in a variety of ways. And then that frees me up to work one to one with pupils or in a small group or in areas of arithmetic that they haven't yet grasped. So as you can see, there's a variety of activities. And then once a week give them an arithmetic test to see where they're going next and what you need to do. And it's that constant ongoing assessment that helps you as a teacher, know exactly where everyone is. From my experience, the pupils actually really like this. They love to see their test scores going up and up and it helps their growth mindset, and it really, really helps them to improve their confidence and their resilience if they're not getting anything right. Another way to build mastery is to have lots of different multiple representations. Children need to be able to show you maths in different ways to be able to master the curriculum. It's a crucial part of showing deep understanding and it helps children to work at greater depth. Now, this is a problem that I love to give my children I like to find interesting ways of asking them to show multiple representations to keep them active and wanting to do it. So give a pupil or your class a picture, it could be anything really with a number on it and ask them to represent it in lots of different ways. So here you can see some of the things that pupils in my class have shown me that they think of. When they see nine and three quarters, they might use some arrow cards to show the number as a decimal, they might use deans to show it as ones, tenths and hundredths, they might write it as an improper fraction, might go and get some actual resources and lots of the children in my class, especially SEM pupils would really, they love this because they can be successful as well. So they'll go and get post it notes and they will perhaps tear a quarter off so that they've got nine and three quarters. Or they will get different objects and show you in that way they might have squared paper where they shade in nine and three quarters of the squares. And then you might get other pupils that will take it really far and maybe write it as a percentage. So what about teaching problem solving? It's really important that when you're teaching problem solving you still go back to this cycle of exploring the maths first clarifying the ideas, practicing the skill and then applying it to non routine problems. So what's the best way to do that? Using variations is a good way for getting pupils to understand how to solve a particular type of problem. For example, here we've got a fractions problem that's quite complex. In my class I would do a guided input with this and teach children actually how to solve that problem as a guided group, as a whole class. If you've got some pupils that can go off and work on non routine problems, they can then give them a similar problem. It's a very, very similar problem, but the fraction is different and the way they solve it would be the same. So they can get confident with how to do it and you can keep giving them the same problem, different numbers, until you think, right, they've really grasped it now and then move on to non routine. Here we have another example. It's different types of measures in the variation. So here we've got one where we're looking at costs and then here we're looking at measurements as well. So the way they solve the problem is the same, but the context is different. Again giving them lots of practice and it's all about you modelling and showing how to solve it. Don't forget you must plan in opportunities at all times for pupils to work at greater depth. And it's really important to remember that greater depth doesn't mean higher ability. All pupils can work at greater depth at different points throughout the year, but the ones that achieve greater depth at the end of the year will be the ones that can do it in every single area of maths. So provide them with problems that have fewer steps. You can use different language, you can have more domains involved in the questions and you can give them increasingly sophisticated problems so they have to really think and unpick the maths that's involved. I'm going to show you an example of what that might look like. So here I have a problem here from the NCETM website that has mastery and then the problem has then been turned into mastery with greater depth. So pupils are asked to put different numbers on a number line that are represented as fractions and decimals, but the greater depth one takes it that step further and they've got to a number line where they've got to think where could it be at the point? So it's just taking the steps out fewer steps, so it's harder for them. So to summarise, to really make sure that your year six pupils are mastering maths by the end of the year, build fluency in arithmetic. Represent the maths in as many different ways as you can. Practice using that mathematical language to communicate ideas and apply your knowledge to lots of different non routine problems. So for any more information, here's how you can get in touch.