The Mathematics Department
The Mathematics department at Presdales is a team of highly committed maths specialist teachers who aim to help all the students achieve their potential in the subject: Mr Payne (Head of Maths), Mrs Share (Head of Key Stage), Mrs Thompson (Head of Key Stage), Mrs Lanka, Mr Baldwin, Miss Johnston, Miss Murrell, Mrs Stephenson, Miss Clifton and Miss McCallum.
We all teach a wide variety of age groups and abilities, from Year 7 right up to Further Mathematics at A level. We work collaboratively to improve the teaching and learning of all students. We encourage students’ wider appreciation of maths with our residential Isle of Wight Maths trip each year and our approach of relating mathematics to real life situations.
www.educ.cam.ac.uk– Presdales School is a Partnership School with the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education. The Maths department usually supports the training of PGCE students each year.
The Maths department works closely with its link Governor, via regular meetings, school visits and email contact.
Our Vision
The Maths department’s vision is to ensure that every student feels fully supported and confident to achieve their potential in mathematics. We wish to provide a variety of teaching and learning styles as well as appropriate and stimulating experiences to maximize the enjoyment, learning and success of our students.
Our Aims
- To enable every student to achieve their full potential in Maths
- To encourage students to take pride in their progress in mathematical understanding
- To ensure that the curriculum objectives are closely matched to each individual student
- To provide varied teaching and learning styles, with stimulating and challenging opportunities
Students are organised into Maths sets right from the start of the year, based on information from their Primary Schools and the KS2 SATS. The Schemes of Work for all students are carefully matched to the students’ abilities. Curriculum objectives are shared with the students and parents via self assessment sheets for each unit of study.
There is provision for a wide variety of practical, problem-solving, functional maths and investigational work to inspire students and enrich their understanding. We include group, paired and individual work to supplement whole class learning.
Students are given an appropriate Maths textbook. This is used in class and at home alongside other resources. Homework is integral to a student’s learning and this is set and marked on a regular basis. All students also have personal accounts on www.MyMaths.co.uk, accessible from both home and school.
Every student brings her own calculator to Maths lessons – we sell our recommended scientific calculator at cost price.
Year 7 prepare and take part in a Probability Fair in the Summer term.
