Maths at SRWA

• In a Maths lesson we will usually explore just one key concept per lesson. We think carefully about how to break down a topic into a coherent set of steps, and we always use mathematically correct language and notation.
• We extend students to think beyond the level at which they are currently being taught.
• We make frequent use of mini-whiteboards, questioning by the teacher, and we push for comprehensive explanations from the students.
• We explore misconceptions, celebrate mistakes and use true/false to promote discussion.
• We present maths in unusual ways in order to emphasise connections.

All of these principles are in place to facilitate students to be able to see links, connections and make inferences and conjectures about different areas of Maths, as well as being able to articulate this clearly to others.

We’ve tried to combine the best of both ‘mastery’ and ‘spiral’ approaches in our curriculum. It certainly follows many of the mastery principles – spending longer on topics to help gain deeper understanding, making connections, keeping the class working together on the same topic and a fundamental belief that, through effort, all students are capable of understanding, doing and improving at mathematics.

We also recognise, though, that just spending a good chunk of time on a topic doesn’t mean that all students will ‘master’ it the first time they see it - that they need to see it again and again in different contexts and in different years to help them truly develop their understanding on their journey to mastery, so we’ve built in the revisiting and reinforcing features of spiral curricula too.

Our curriculum includes a weekly SRWA Career tutorial. Each week we present a chosen career which requires a good level of Maths. We show what the job entails and discuss how students can reach that destination.