Dalmain is dedicated to ensuring our Mathematicians are curious, flexible learners who are confident, adventurous, resilient and risk-taking in their approach. Through practical activities, exploration and discussion, we aim for all children to be mentally fluent, able to see patterns and make connections within the number system and prior learning.

We want our children to master maths not just have a surface knowledge and skills in the subject.

Mastering maths means pupils of all ages acquiring a deep, long-term and adaptable understanding of the subject. The phrase ‘teaching for mastery’ describes the elements of classroom practice and school organisation that combine to give pupils the best chances of mastering maths. Achieving mastery means acquiring a solid enough understanding of the maths that’s been taught to enable pupils to move on to more advanced material.

At the core of our teaching is the concrete, pictorial and abstract approach.

• Concrete – children have the opportunity to use concrete objects to help them understand and explain what they are doing.​

• Pictorial – children then build on this concrete approach by using pictorial representations, which can then be used to reason and solve problems.​

• Abstract – With the foundations firmly laid, children can move to an abstract approach using numbers and key concepts with confidence.​

At Dalmain we use NCTEM and Maths Hub to support our planning with a central component being their five big ideas drawn from recent research. 

Central to a lot of the maths work in school is fluency, this is the ability to instantly recall known facts such as number bonds and times tables quickly and effortlessly. To support with fluency every child has a login to Sumdog which uses engaging and adaptive games to ensure all children make progress. It is part of the weekly homework expectation that children complete Sumdog activities at home.