1. Fitting challenge into the overall approach

First of all, remember that the materials are designed to help you keep the class together, allowing all children to master a concept while those who grasp it quickly have time to explore it in more depth. Of course, there will be children in your class that can work through the Practice Book questions more quickly than others. Aim to challenge these children as they work on the same content (see section 3).

Sometimes you may want to write an extra question on the board or provide this on paper. You can usually do this by tweaking the lesson materials (see section 4). The questions are designed to form a carefully structured sequence that builds understanding step by step, but, with careful thought about the purpose of each question, you can use the materials flexibly where you need to.

There are some general ideas for adding depth and breadth during the lesson on p28 of your Teacher Guide. Here are a few example questions you could use in any lesson:

• Can you demonstrate your solution another way? (e.g. for the Discover task)
• Can you model your answers using concrete materials? (e.g. for the Think Together questions)
• Is there another way of working out the answer?
• Have you found all the solutions?
• Is that always true?
• What’s different between this question and that question? And what’s the same?

NB: You’ll notice that there is a Challenge question at the end of the guided and independent practice sections. This is designed so that all children can access and attempt it, if they have worked through the steps leading up to it. There may be some children in a given lesson that don’t manage to do the Challenge, but it is not supposed to be a distinct task for a subset of the class. When you look through the lesson materials before teaching, think about what each question is specifically asking, and compare this with the key learning point for the lesson. This will help you decide which questions you feel it’s essential for all children to answer, before moving on. You can at least aim for all children to try the Challenge!

2. ‘Deepen’ activities

There is a Deepen activity for each unit. These are designed to follow on from the End of Unit Check, stretching children who have a firm understanding of the key learning from the unit. Children can work on them independently, which makes it easier for the teacher to facilitate the Strengthen activity for children who need extra support. Deepen activities could also be introduced earlier in the unit if the necessary work has been covered.

The Deepen activities are on ActiveLearn. In the Planning area, you can find them by opening the page for a given unit (they appear towards the bottom). Otherwise, you can find all the Deepen activities together on the Resources page (filter by Deepen). 

3. ‘Deepen’ support for each lesson (Teacher Guide) 

The Teacher Guide provides valuable support for each stage of the lesson. This includes ‘Deepen’ tips for the guided and independent practice sections, which will help you provide extra stretch and challenge within your lesson, without having to organise additional tasks. If you have a teaching assistant, they can also make use of this advice. There are also suggestions for the lesson as a whole in the ‘Going Deeper’ section on the first page of the Teacher Guide section for that lesson. 

Every class is different, so you can always go a bit further in the direction indicated, if appropriate, and build on the suggestions given. The main thing is to make sure you’re getting the most out of the Teacher Guide, before worrying about what other challenges you could provide.

4. Using the questions flexibly to provide extra challenge

Don’t be afraid to use the Power Maths questions flexibly to teach the best lesson you can for your class! The questions are very carefully sequenced and scaffolded to build children’s understanding, but you as the teacher can determine how best they can be used with your class. Sometimes you might feel children would benefit from another similar question for consolidation before moving on to the next one, or you might feel they would benefit from a harder example in the same style. It should be quite quick and easy to generate ‘more of the same’ type questions where this is the case.

Besides creating additional questions, you should be able to find a question in the lesson that you can adapt into a game or open-ended investigation, if this helps to keep everyone engaged. It could simply be that, instead of answering 5 × 5 etc on the page, they could build a robot with 5 lots of 5 cubes.

5. Extra questions for early finishers 

If you do want some additional, challenging questions for children to move onto, Pinpoint Problem Solving and Reasoning was designed to support teachers with this sort of situation. Teachers can give these cards directly to children for independent work on the same topic, providing appropriate stretch while also freeing up the teacher to work with those who need more support. (Use the discount code ‘PIN30’ for 30% off.)

The last question (D for Deeper) is the most challenging, but the first part of the card gets children started so they don’t get stuck. There are some accompanying teaching notes which a teaching assistant could use to offer support (as well as further challenge).

6. Other suggestions

Another way of stretching children is through mixed ability pairs, or via other opportunities for children to explain their understanding in their own way. This is a good way of encouraging children to go deeper into the learning, rather than, for instance, tackling questions that are computationally more challenging but conceptually equivalent in level. 

We would encourage schools to engage with their local Maths Hub and participate in training opportunities and workgroups. All schools embedding a teaching for mastery approach can share general strategies for providing appropriate challenge, whether they are using Power Maths or not. 

Finally, NRICH provides free investigative tasks that could be used to provide additional stretch and challenge alongside Power Maths.