Hello everyone, welcome back and a warm welcome to those staff new to the Archway Learning Trust. I hope everyone has had a fantastic summer break and is excited for the new school year ahead. I am very excited to be starting my new role as assistant principal for responsibility for Mathematics across the trust at last!
You will see that I have made some changes to the scheme of learning over the summer. The Year 7 curriculum is being updated in response to the improving standards at Key Stage 2. The vast majority of our feeder primary schools are now teaching for mastery and as a result we are seeing students join us more confident and fluent with the KS2 curriculum than ever before. Lots of our Year 7 students are eager to learn new concepts and are excited to be challenged in their Maths lessons as they join us at secondary school. I am working with the East Midlands East Maths Hub and the Maths departments within the trust to ensure that the Year 7 lessons continue to be developed to stretch our higher prior attainers whilst also support all learners to make excellent progress. We must however be mindful that the SATS were taken by our Year 7 students almost 4 months ago now and not all students will join us confident and fluent with the number skills required to be successful at secondary school so some consolidation of KS2 concepts will always be necessary for some students. Do make good use of numeracy ninjas each lesson, this resource has been designed to fill gaps in students’ numeracy skills and maintain/build fluency. Students should always be given the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and the numeracy ninjas focus worksheets are an excellent intervention. They can be found here: www.numeracyninjas.org/?page_id=165
My vision is to create a 4 year mastery curriculum with Year 11 classes following bespoke medium term plans based prior assessment and exam analysis. Nick from BBA has shared his Year 11 medium term plans on here already so please do take a look. Thank you Nick! There will be further guidance from Heads of Maths about the Year 11 plans. Right now I am busy developing and uploading the Year 10 lessons that follow our Year 7, 8 and 9 scheme. Any feedback on these lessons in particular would be greatly appreciated.
Other changes this year include the CAF. Common Assessment Framework. Essentially all schools across the trust will be completing at least 2 common formal assessments. These assessments will be uploaded on here and will follow this schedule:
| Year 7 | End of Spring 1
Concepts and skills assessed: Autumn 1 – 20% Autumn 2 – 40% Spring 1 – 40% |
End of Year
Concepts and Skills assessed: Autumn – 20% Spring – 40% Summer 1 – 40% |
| Year 8 | End of Autumn 1
Concepts and skills assessed: Autumn 1 – 40% Y7 Summer/Spring 2 – 40% Y7 Spring 1/Autumn – 40%
|
End of Year
Concepts and skills assessed: Summer/Spring 2 – 40% Spring 1/Autumn – 40% Year 7 – 20% |
| Year 9 | End of Spring 1
Concepts and skills assessed: Autumn – 40% Spring 1 – 40% Year 8 – 20% |
End of Year
Concepts and skills assessed: Summer/Spring 2 – 40% Spring 1/Autumn – 40% Year 8 – 20% |
| Year 10 | End of Autumn 2
Concepts and skills assessed: Autumn 1 – 40% Autumn 2 – 40% Year 9 – 20% |
End of Year
Mock Examination |
| Year 11 | End of Autumn 1
Mock Examination 1 |
End of Spring 1
Mock Examination 2 |
This year I am entering my 15th year of Maths teaching and despite this I still get a bit nervous about teaching again after the lovely, long summer break. This week I have been listening to this: www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/slice-of-advice-what-does-the-first-lesson-with-your-class-look-like/ Please do smile before Christmas, whilst I believe first lessons should be very formal with clear boundaries set I will still smile at some point. Hopefully. Adam from BWA shared this first lesson power point with me last year and I found it really useful so please feel free to adapt it and use it. Thank you Adam.
I will hopefully see you all at some point this week, if you would like anything in the bulletin please let me know.
Kind Regards
Louise