Further Maths

As like with the Maths lessons at SRWA, the Further Maths lessons, we will usually explore just one key concept per lesson. We think carefully about how to break down a topic into a coherent set of steps, and we always use mathematically correct language and notation. We extend students’ to think beyond the level at which they are currently being taught. We make frequent use of mini-whiteboards, questioning by the teacher, and we push for comprehensive explanations from the students. We explore misconceptions, celebrate mistakes and use true/false to promote discussion.

We present maths in unusual ways in order to emphasise connections. All of these principles are in place to facilitate students to be able to see links, connections and make inferences and conjectures about different areas of Maths as well as being able to articulate this clearly to others.

We’ve tried to combine the best of both ‘mastery’ and ‘spiral’ approaches in our curriculum. It certainly follows many of the mastery principles – spending longer on topics to help gain deeper understanding, making connections, keeping the class working together on the same topic and a fundamental belief that, through effort, all pupils are capable of understanding, doing and improving at mathematics. But we also recognise that just spending a good chunk of time on a topic doesn’t mean that all pupils will ‘master’ it the first time they see it, and that they need to see it again and again in different contexts and in different years to help them truly develop their understanding on their journey to mastery, so we’ve built in the revisiting and reinforcing features of spiral curricula too.

This pathway aims to cultivate a sophisticated appreciation for the elegance and interconnectedness of abstract mathematics, explicitly training students in the high-level logical reasoning, synoptic problem-solving, and formal proof required for STEM degrees and quantitative careers.