Same Day Interventions: How To Keep Up Not Catch Up [KS2]

Implementing a same day intervention helps pupils to keep up with peers rather than catch up with them. A same day intervention should keep pupils on track and address any misconceptions and the concepts that pupils did not understand in the lesson so they are ready for the next lesson.

Here’s how to make your same day maths intervention as effective as possible.  

Progress is not linear

All primary teachers must develop pupils’ understanding of maths. Ideally moving them towards maths mastery. But progress is neither linear nor standard and pupils progress at different rates.

While one pupil may have mastered equivalent fractions and the four operations, another may still require concrete resources to assist him in more basic understanding. This is normal and indeed increasingly prevalent as the majority of teachers now find themselves teaching a mixed ability class. 

Your role is to ensure that every child can progress at their own pace and that they do not get left behind from the learning of the rest of the class.

As SATs approach, there’s an increased focus on finding the most effective ways to maximise the learning of the Year 2 and Year 6 children–same day maths interventions are one of the most effective practices.

Same day intervention options

Many schools run various primary school interventions including booster classes, lunchtime clubs, after-school clubs and even half-term schools to help pupils catch up ahead of SATs. At my school we hold boosters and, when possible, a Maths lunchtime club.

However, this can often lead teachers to feel burnt out.

So if pupils still have gaps in their understanding, we need to look at other ways to increase learning without squeezing all of the energy out of teachers.

The obvious answer is that the teaching workload should be shared among staff across the school and learning, especially for SATs, shouldn’t start in Year 6. 

But it can take time for this culture of collective responsibility to emerge in a school.

Who Should Deliver the Maths Intervention to Year 6?

The class teacher is the best option. Yet, due to timetabling conflicts for most schools, they can’t run the interventions without burnout.

So, who do we look to next?

Intervention teachers delivering KS2 maths interventions

One option some schools buy into is using specific intervention teachers.

While there are merits to that solution, I personally worry about the fact this adult hasn’t been in the lesson and might not use the same strategies as the class teacher.

This means there’s a higher chance that children may not make the connection between concepts taught in class learning and intervention learning.

External providers of math interventions

Inevitably there will always be some pupils in the class for whom a personalised approach is the only way to truly accelerate their progress before any national assessments.

In these cases, one to one interventions are the best answer. Maths tutoring provider Third Space Learning specialises in personalised, online one to one interventions. Created by maths experts and qualified teachers, Third Space Learning’s one to one maths intervention lessons help pupils keep up with their peers.

Every learner begins by answering a set of diagnostic questions to help identify their learning gaps. Depending on pupils’ gaps, teachers can choose which programme pupils complete and the order of lessons. Alternatively, we can assign pupils to a programme to help close their maths gaps.

Pupils engage with tutors in a virtual classroom using tools and a headset to communicate and develop their maths skills. Ongoing training ensures tutors use the most up-to-date teaching strategies, methodologies and pedagogies to reflect pupils’ learning in class.

Maths tutoring with Skye, from Third Space Learning, allows you to reach every pupil who needs extra support to keep up with their peers.

Teaching assistants delivering KS2 maths interventions

At my school, we believed that teaching assistants (TAs) were in the perfect position to deliver Maths interventions at scale to Year 6.

Why? Teaching assistants:

• Take part in the actual lesson
• Learn from the teaching strategies the teacher uses
• Can identify pupils’ areas of weakness
• Watch how the teacher addresses misconceptions

This means schools can use teaching assistants effectively for same day interventions as they quite possibly already have a very good understanding of how an intervention should be delivered to the children.

However, despite our positive outlook on using TAs to deliver intervention, research is emerging that shows the flaws in this.

In Rob Webster’s ‘Maximising the Impact of Teaching Assistants,’ I was shocked to find that the evidence suggests the more time a learner spends with a teaching assistant in interventions the less progress they make (this is obviously through no fault of the TA).

My understanding from reading the book is that three key aspects of teaching assistant impact on learning need changes at the senior leadership level:

• Deployment
• Practice
• Preparedness

Delivering great maths interventions: a same day approach

In my school, the leadership team had already concluded that we needed to improve our intervention system. But, we had to do this without children missing out on any teaching.

It became clear to us that a same day intervention delivered in the afternoon by a trained TA could be the answer to our problem!

This style of intervention allows children to receive high-quality first teaching (which we know is the most effective way for children to make progress) by staying in the classroom during the morning lesson, together with the TA who learns as they do as necessary.

Pupils then catch up with the learning they need to consolidate or require more support with after the lesson.

Making same day interventions work

The new model allows the teaching assistant to receive dedicated and essential training. Observing good practice in the morning maths lesson helps teaching assistants improve their subject knowledge and their pedagogy – including effective questioning.

After all, how can they manage to develop these skills if they are always out of the classroom when the teacher is teaching?

We also hold TA training sessions while the children are in morning assemblies. Training sessions embed a consistent approach across the school and ensure that all adults supporting children have a deep understanding of the pedagogy.

I am a huge supporter of training for teaching assistants and so also run a series of subject knowledge training sessions specifically for teaching assistants.

We have already discussed including an extra session about questioning as all of the subject knowledge in the world is useless if it isn’t used alongside a sound pedagogical understanding.

Benefits of the same day intervention model

With the old intervention model, children were continuously filling gaps in interventions but could never catch up with the rest of the class due to the structure of the interventions.

Now, the same day intervention structure allows us to support the children to catch up before the following lesson so that they are not left behind.

Since running same day interventions across the school, we have found a wealth of benefits:

• Closing maths gaps
• Meeting the needs of children with special educational needs (SEN)
• Making learning accessible for ALL children
• Ensuring pupils keep up and don’t have to catch up

While the initial data looks promising, we will need to continuously monitor and reflect upon these same day interventions to assess their ongoing effectiveness.

Lesson learned from the “Keep Up Not Catch Up” intervention approach

Although same day interventions are having a positive impact on pupil progress, there are still aspects of the model that we need to address.

For example, often same day interventions tend to take place in shared areas of the school with multiple year groups working in the same space. It isn’t surprising to me that interventions aren’t as effective as they could be!

This is largely because when we take pupils to shared intervention areas, we remove them from their usual learning environment and introduce a range of new external distractors and influencers.

Moreover, these areas are not necessarily designed for learning. For example:

• Hallways
• Desks outside of classrooms
• Meeting rooms

In these areas, there usually isn’t access to learning walls, maths dictionaries or resources such as 100 squares or tens frames which are available in the classroom.

Having changed all of these aspects of their learning, we then still expect them to take the same pride in their learning!

Implementing same day interventions for KS2

If you would like to start trying this model with your class, there are several considerations I would suggest:

• Identify the strengths of your TA.
• Discuss your lesson reflections on lessons with them.
• Ensure they understand formative assessment and help them build their subject knowledge.
• Once you both feel confident, during a PPA session deliver a same day intervention for your TA to observe. Focus closely on the skills and knowledge developed in the lesson that day.
• Finally, take a look at my recommendations for implementing a same day intervention.

Dos and Don’ts of Same Day Interventions For KS2 And Year 6

These are my dos and don’ts of same day interventions, I hope you find them useful.

Do:

• Hold the interventions soon after the lesson
• Make sure the teachers have selected the children involved in the intervention
• Ensure the teachers create the resources for the intervention
• Find a consistent location for the intervention
• Ensure TAs use vocabulary and strategies consistent with the teacher
• Record the impact of the intervention
• Create a short, specific and focused intervention

Don’t:

• Hhave too many children in each intervention
• Take children out of main Maths lessons
• Always take the same children – use assessment for learning during the lesson.
• See the interventions as a to-do list to get through – reflect on the learning that has taken place
• Expect it to work perfectly straight away!

Keep up not catch up

Same day interventions allow children to feel valued as part of the class, not segregated from it. They can discuss the shared learning with their peers, not feel excluded from it. They can learn through whole class discussion, not be removed from it.

Finally, and most importantly, they allow learners the opportunity to keep up, not catch up!