Nahda Academy
Saudi Arabia
What makes Nahda Academy an Accredited School?
Nahda Academy’s investment in time, resources and maths mastery training has really paid off and we were delighted to discover that the progress they’ve made in mathematics is the highest progress across all subjects in every year group.
This is particularly impressive, as their academic school year was cut short in 2020 and they spent two months delivering online learning.
School at a glance:
- Boutique school in Jeddah with Saudi students forming 90% of the school population
- Has been in operation since 2018
- Delivers a bilingual curriculum to children from pre-nursery and is now moving into the junior high school years
- Offers a rigorous, broad education with accomplished international and local teachers
“It allows all children to make progress… The use of resources really helps my struggling learners and showing working out in many ways extends my advanced learners… This mastery approach has definitely changed the way we teach maths for the better.”
– Year 2 Teacher, Nahda Academy
In their own words
Our Maths — No Problem! journey
At Nahda Academy, we value the development of inquiry, questioning and growing students into lifelong learners. In 2019–2020, developing and refining our mathematics curriculum has been a key goal in our School Plan.
We have been using Maths — No Problem! across our primary school since opening in 2018. A significant amount of whole-school professional learning time has been dedicated to training staff and refining the implementation of Maths — No Problem! We expect teachers to deliver pedagogical excellence for our students. Staff have been involved in collaborative planning, mentoring, observing each other teach, investigating Maths — No Problem! support materials, moderating students’ journaling, and more. This has helped to develop and refine teacher practice.
We’ve invested in developing our teachers’ pedagogical skills to implement Maths — No Problem! Our maths team are extremely active and lead regular and ongoing coaching and collaborative planning opportunities for the teaching team. At our school you see regular, focused professional dialogue happening between teachers about Mathematics as the norm. We have driven maths in many ways and celebrated students’ progress with staff, children and parents.
Teachers have particularly enjoyed the challenge of teacher journaling in different ways. Having read many articles and researched journaling in other schools, our teachers now have the skills to support children to grasp and experience journaling to its fullest potential.
Our school has enthusiastically backed teachers by investing in a wide range of practical resources to support student learning. This has ensured the conceptual understanding of our teaching has deepened the thinking and reasoning of our students. Teachers are extremely positive and share regular feedback with our maths team to ensure we promote good practice across our school.
Maths — No Problem! in our school
We are dedicated to ensuring our teaching staff thrive so our children can thrive from teachers’ passion and enthusiasm for teaching. We currently have a maths team made up of three teachers across the key stages. The maths team provides training and workshops to both teachers and parents. We have weekly meetings to discuss opportunities to further improve Maths across the school and support/ train our teaching staff. We participate in cross curricular team teaching and set up demonstration lessons for staff.
100% of students in our Primary School from Year 1 to Year 6 have been using the Maths — No Problem! textbooks and workbooks since 2018. Our students really enjoy the opportunity to develop their independent practice through their workbooks. As one Year 3 learner reported, “I like the workbook best because I can work through it at my own pace and you get to work things out in lots of different ways.”
We have also committed to educating our community about how we approach mathematics. We feel it is important to share our maths journey with our parents so they too can celebrate the success of their children’s learning. Support for parents has included workshops, information in our newsletter and visual displays that explain and show evidence of our approach to journaling and thinking in mathematics. Our students are thriving as a result of their engagement in the Maths — No Problem! scheme. Right across our school, our students are clearly developing their maths mastery skills and we are both proud and delighted. One Year 5 pupil reported that “I love maths now. In my last school I didn’t but now I get to be creative. Before, I used to do only 1 method, now I can show 5 different methods on one page.”
We celebrate maths at our school through our ‘Maths Celebration Week’. Parents are invited into classrooms to participate in lessons with students. This helps parents understand how Maths — No Problem! is making a difference to our students’ learning and students can also proudly share their progress. Parents have reported being particularly impressed with how Maths — No Problem! has equipped our children with finding many ways to show and explain concepts and deepen their conceptual understanding.
School contact details
Contact name:
Dara Ryan – Maths Curriculum Coordinator
Address:
Al Andalus, Jeddah 23326
Saudi Arabia
Phone number:
012 662 1646 / 012 662 1656
