Maths

Welcome to Maths

Before training to teach, I worked in the computing and banking industries for over twenty five years. Following an ‘it’s now or never’ decision in 2011, I left my City job and began training to become a senior school maths teacher. I joined Gateway as the subject leader for maths in 2015.

One of my primary reasons for choosing to teach maths was that I feel that too many people think it is acceptable to say that they ‘can’t do maths’. Everybody can do maths and I think that the key to enabling pupils to learn maths is to make the subject interesting and fun by using a wide variety of resources and to give pupils the confidence to try without fearing failure. One of the best ways to learn maths is to get it wrong and to learn through analyzing and understanding mistakes.

At Gateway we use the Abacus and Whiterose hub schemes of work to provide a basic framework for planning. All teachers are then encouraged to supplement these schemes with their own resources. Throughout the school, problem solving is seen as a core skill and we provide pupils with the opportunity to develop these skills through both individual and group work. At all times pupils are encouraged to question and explain their understanding and solutions to a problem in order to develop depth and breadth of knowledge.

Sarah Row, Maths Subject Leader