At Dallington School we believe that problem solving is an important way of learning, because it motivates children to connect previous knowledge with new situations and to develop creativity in the process. Therefore it is important that children see themselves as successful problem solvers who relish a challenge and can persist when things get tricky.

We allow our pupils to feel safe to explore their ideas in the knowledge that it will be fine if they get it wrong. The children are beginning to learn that when solving problems in mathematics, there are many different stategies you can use.

At Dallington we use a hands-on approach to learning mathematics. In Year 2 for example, the children have been learning about patterns and sequences, they created patterns by using potatoes cut into different shapes to do some printing.

Hands-on learning allows the pupils to directly observe and understand what is happening. It is often hard to properly understand something you have never directly experienced. In order to do this, we use a wide range of resources. It is very normally to walk into a mathematics lesson at Dallington school and see some children using playdough, some children using chalk outside and even some using spaghetti and marshmallows!

We also like to use real life examples and make it meaningful for the children. The children are often asked a question to investigate, during our topic on length they were asked if the tallest people have the biggest hands. The children were motivated and created a hypothesis which they want to test to see if they were right.

To conclude, at Dallington we believe that all children should be curious, asking questions and being challenged in order to meet their full potential.