My year 5 class really needs to go over addition, subtraction and multiplication again but I don't want to bore my top children. I have a group of about 13 children who came in this year counting on their fingers for everything and not knowing their times tables. That's too many for just interventions but too few to be able to take the whole class back to the y2 level curriculum they need to recap. I've tried doing whole class lessons on bridging ten with manipulatives and just adding lots of reasoning but the kids know I'm giving them "easy work" and play up. This class has a patchy history with teachers leaving mid year etc. There are also 4 statemented chn in the class who only really respond to 1-1 or 1-2 teaching. I get my ta to do this in the next room since she struggles with behaviour if I give her a group.
I have done 6 weeks with the chn in mixed ability groups and 6 weeks with them separated by ability. Not much difference either way. My plan at the moment is spend 2 weeks going over column method again, so that at least the lower chn have a go-to method where they can muddle through. I will have options for chn to self differentiate from 1 Digit numbers to three 5 digit numbers! I know I should be getting the tops to reason but they struggle to record their thinking as sentences etc so I do reasoning as a more guided thing. In order to get more time for number, I will scrap a topic lesson this half term and teach an extra maths lesson in the afternoon each week on the geometry lessons I'm supposed to be covering right now according to the SoW. What do you think? I feel guilty about this plan since I know that I should be going back to number bonds within 10, then bridging 10, then bridging powers of ten etc until they actually get it,not just teaching over-reliance on column.