Maths

At George Tomlinson, we use a mastery approach to teaching maths. We do this through a programme called Inspire Maths. It is a whole-school primary maths programme that provides everything needed to support a mastery approach to teaching and learning mathematics, and meet the higher expectation of the 2014 National Curriculum.

It works by using accessible pupil textbooks to introduce concepts in a highly scaffolded way, enabling all children to develop critical thinking skills, make mathematical connections and become confident mathematicians.

We want our children to receive a high-quality mathematics education that ensures that ALL pupils are fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, have the ability to reason mathematically and can apply their knowledge and understanding to solve problems. We also want them to have an appreciation of the power of mathematics and a sense of fun and curiosity about the subject.

Inspire is a sustained and consistent scheme with a carefully designed spiral progression and an emphasis on a concrete- pictorial-abstract approach. This means that children have access to physical, concrete resources when learning mathematical concepts, and have the choice to use them to understand what their maths really means.

They can then begin to understand, after having physically manipulated concrete resources, that these can be represented in pictures, as well as with numbers (the abstract).

At George Tomlinson, we have high expectations of every child and are committed to closing the attainment gap and ensuring that no child is left behind.