No Maths Marking!
‘Big Maths Beat That!’ isn’t like any other assessment and tracking system. It is at the very centre of the school’s entire maths curriculum. It is the engine room of the pedagogy, as opposed to ‘bolt-on tracking’. Yes, you can also say goodbye to marking! If you were told to throw out all your tracking systems (unless you desperately wanted to keep them for your own purpose), then BMBT would remain. When the curriculum, pedagogy, and tracking are one, then you have an easy and natural response to the question, ‘What impact is our curriculum having on our children’s learning?’
Simple Assessment of Progress
The BMBT challenges are at one with the curriculum design and learning journey that children enjoy, whilst also allowing adults to assess progress and attainment in relation to age-related expectations. This means that at any moment in time, we can see if a child is ‘on-track’, ‘off-track’, or ‘ahead of track’. Perhaps most importantly, however, the challenges inform us of each child’s reality, where they have learning gaps, so we can precisely address their needs, irrespective of their age!
The questions in the BMBT challenges are linked to key steps in the learning journey. Each answer informs the teacher’s understanding of that child, what they know, and what they don’t know. Armed with this information, identifying what to teach next is simple! Big Maths Online is your best friend, highlighting each child’s Learning Gaps to simplify precise, responsive planning, with Tracking tools to monitor the impact.
Teachers and school leaders can, together, easily and instantly;
- See the proportion ‘on/off-track’ against national expectations in each cohort, or class.
- Track progress and attainment over time, ensuring each class/cohort is increasing the proportion that is ‘on-track’ every term
(aiming for 100% on track as soon as possible in school, unless there are relevant learning difficulties). - Track each child’s progress and attainment over time.
- Use BMBT as a simple, accurate, and instant baseline assessment to confirm a child’s current reality, so you know exactly what to teach.
Children love assessment and tracking!
Well, they do if you do BMBT! The simple progression allows them to understand the assessment and tracking system. The emphasis is only ever on them getting their best-ever score, as opposed to comparing themselves to other children or league tables. Every child in the school can go home on Friday with a certificate or a sticker on their jumper proudly stating, ‘Big Maths… I BEAT THAT!’
If you haven’t remembered it, you haven’t learned it.
We now know that great teaching has only taken place if children have remembered the curriculum content after some time has passed. Learning from the ‘here and now’ of a lesson must be transferred into the Long Term Memory. BMBT is designed to challenge children to answer questions linked to skills that are repeated each week until they move on to the next challenge, becoming more fluent as they do so. So, on top of everything else, BMBT is the ultimate retrieval practice system!
Whether children are completing the challenges on paper or logging into the Big Maths Online website, once these scores are in, the teacher can see which children across the class aren’t correctly answering which question using the ‘Learning Gaps’ feature. It means the teacher can immediately cross-reference the specific children, with the specific question, and within a split second (literally!) the specific teaching response. This means that the teacher notes and resources needed to address that skill can be placed digitally into the teacher’s lesson plan!
There is still more to say though!
At Big Maths, we believe this is what Education Technology is all about. Note how the pedagogy and curriculum come first, then an integral assessment and tracking system is put into place to see the impact of the curriculum. We believe the Big Maths Online is the best tool to support the teaching and learning cycle in a way that reduces the workload for teachers and is fun and motivating for children.
If you are not familiar with the 3 parts of BMBT then they are:
1. The CLIC Challenges (these cover all the Basic Skills of maths).
2. The Learn Its Challenges (these cover all number facts, including multiplication tables).
3. The SAFE Challenges (these cover the Wider Maths curriculum: Shape, Amounts, Fractions and Explaining Data).