Teaching for Mastery

Principles:

• Mathematics teaching for mastery assumes everyone can learn and enjoy mathematics.
• Mathematical learning behaviours are developed so that pupils focus and engage fully as learners who reason and seek to make connections.
• Teachers continually develop their specialist knowledge for teaching mathematics, working collaboratively to refine and improve their teaching.
• Curriculum design ensures a coherent and detailed sequence of essential content to support sustained progression over time.

Lesson Design:

• Lesson design links to prior learning to ensure all can access the new learning and identifies carefully sequenced steps in progression to build secure understanding.
• Examples, representations and models are carefully selected to expose the structure of mathematical concepts and emphasise connections, enabling pupils to develop a deep knowledge of mathematics.
• Procedural fluency and conceptual understanding are developed in tandem because each supports the development of the other.
• It is recognised that practice is a vital part of learning, but the practice must be designed to both reinforce pupils’ procedural fluency and develop their conceptual understanding.

In the Classroom:

• Pupils are taught through whole-class interactive teaching, enabling all to master the concepts necessary for the next part of the curriculum sequence.
• In a typical lesson, the teacher leads back and forth interaction, including questioning, short tasks, explanation, demonstration, and discussion, enabling pupils to think, reason and apply their knowledge to solve problems.
• Use of precise mathematical language enables all pupils to communicate their reasoning and thinking effectively.
• If a pupil fails to grasp a concept or procedure, this is identified quickly, and gaps in understanding are addressed systematically to prevent them falling behind.