Creative Teaching and Learning

How to get students to work mathematically

The new secondary school curriculum demands that KS3 students be capable at “working mathematically”. But what does this entail? In this article, Barbara Miller breaks down the underlying concepts into helpful summaries.

The new curriculum considers “working mathematically” to be achieved when students can solve problems, reason mathematically and are mathematically fluent. But interpreting those objectives on a year-by-year basis has been left inadequately vague. In this issue’s ‘Strategies for the new curriculum’, our Maths expert, Barbara Miller, examines the key curriculum objectives relating to working mathematically and shares a variety of approaches for teaching them in KS3.

Developing Fluency

Year 7

  • Has command of number, times tables and place value, including fractions, decimals, powers and roots
  • Can use language and properties precisely to analyse numbers, algebraic expressions, shapes, probability and statistics

Pupils need regular practice with their use of number. It can help to incorporate brief oral episodes in lessons for pupils to rehearse and sharpen their number skills. As well as keeping established learning fresh also introduce more recent learning that you want pupils to embed, for example the decimal equivalents of fractions.

Open up mathematical thinking by inviting targeted pupils to explain how they have approached a calculation or solved a problem. Encourage pupils to evaluate methods and discuss what’s effective and why. Paired work can help, tasking pairs to come up with two or more different methods and then deciding on the best.

For written fluency, keep the focus on developing pupils’ ability to record mathematical ideas and methods clearly and accurately. Pupils need strategies to record their own notes on key learning. It can help if pupils annotate some of the work in their exercise books with personal notes to help them recall key steps and methods.

This year sees an increase in the range of notation and language that pupils need to use when talking about and recording their work. Model effective recording by showing and discussing examples of pupil work to the class and give pupils time to check and refine their recording at critical parts of each topic.

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