Burley St Matthias Primary School

Click here to see our Long Term Plan for maths.

Click here to find out more about our approach to teaching and assessing maths at BSM. 

At Burley St Matthias, we follow a 'mastery' approach to teaching and learning in maths, through the Power Maths scheme published by Pearson. The scheme matches the expectations of the National Curriculum for Mathematics and is approved by the DfE. 

Power Maths draws strongly on a concrete-pictorial-abstract (CPA) approach.  The CPA approach helps children achieve a secure number sense – that is, a sense of what numbers really represent and how to use them mathematically.  This is done through a series of carefully structured representations – using physical objects (concrete), diagrams or pictures which represent these objects (pictorial) and ultimately using representations such as numerals (abstract).  The structured apparatus such as base 10 (Dienes equipment), Numicon and other models and images are fundamental to this, as is the bar model which enables children to translate a calculation or word problem into a picture.

Power Maths helps children to use heuristics to solve problems.  Heuristics refers to the different strategies that children can adopt to solve unfamiliar or non-routine problems.  These strategies include drawing the bar model, pattern-spotting, using diagrams and estimating or 'guess and check'.