Teaching for mastery…teaching for understanding
Progress in mathematics learning each year should be assessed according to the extent to which pupils are gaining a deep understanding of the content taught for that year, resulting in sustainable knowledge and skills. Key measures of this are the abilities to reason mathematically and to solve increasingly complex problems, doing so with fluency, as described in the aims of the National Curriculum.
Teaching for Mastery Introduction National Centre for Excellence of Teaching in Mathematics (NCETM) 2015
Primary resources
NCETM Teaching for Mastery assessments
Project exploring teaching for mastery in mixed-age classes
This small-scale action research project explored teaching for mastery in mixed-age classes, focussing on how to teach so that children move through the programmes of study for their year group at ‘broadly the same pace’, a crucial issue when focussing on ‘closing the gap’.
The report includes a number of case studies and links to video clips of teachers talking about these case studies can be found below. The clips focus both on adapting the lesson structure to allow a focus on age-related expectations in a mixed-age class and elements of mastery (or quality first teaching) which proved to be significant during the project.
Structuring the lesson:
Keeping the class together where possible: a flexible approach
- High View 2
- Newton Ferrers 1
- Newton Ferrers 2
- East-the-Water
- Beaford 2 – includes changing the lesson structure to two shorter maths sessions each day sandwiched around morning break
- Beaford 3 – impact of restructuring on teachers and children
Providing separate teaching for individual year groups
- Halberton
- Holywell 1
- West Down
- Brampford Speke 1 – includes meeting the needs of three age groups