Adaptive Teaching in Mathematics and Numeracy.
This session, all of our teachers are taking an evidence-based approach to the teaching of mathematics and numeracy, with a particular focus on the differentiation of their lessons. Traditional differentiation often involved children being placed into set groups — for example, The Triangles or The Squares. However, evidence shows that this can be limiting for many children, as it doesn’t always provide opportunities for high-attaining pupils to be stretched when the teacher is working with others. Work for higher-attaining pupils can often become ‘more of the same’. Children who are higher-attaining are often ready to work on more contextualised learning. This means, rather than working out answers to ‘sums’, they are applying their already strong mental arithmetic to real life problems. They also benefit from working together on these challenges as it promotes opportunities for them to talk through their thinking and challenge each other. It can also mean that children who might have traditionally been in the ‘bottom group’ are not exposed to more challenging learning — even though, with the right level of scaffolding, they are often capable of accessing it. Research also shows that children who would have traditionally be considered ‘core learners’, or ‘in the middle group’, often stayed there and wouldn’t naturally push themselves to access more demanding work.
At Kingcase, our teachers were keen to try something new, rooted in evidence about equitable pedagogy. As a result, they have implemented a new approach to structuring aspects of differentiation within their maths lessons.
Follow this link to find out more and to hear from our P7 children about their views on this.
