Mathematics

Through our teaching and learning, children are nurtured to improve their mathematical knowledge, skills and understanding. Our curriculum is carefully planned in order to allow for progression of prior learning, repetition of key skills and the interleaving of key concepts. We encourage children to recognise the importance of Mathematics in their daily lives and to embed secure foundations of mathematical fluency (including times tables) at a young age. We want our children to be problem solvers who enjoy solving problems and reasoning mathematically.

Intent: What we expect children to learn

Through the Mathematics curriculum we aim that all children will become resilient, independent, confident and fluent mathematicians. They will develop the skills that they can apply to situations beyond their classroom and within their daily lives. We strive for all children to enjoy Mathematics and to experience success in the subject. Through our carefully sequenced Mathematics curriculum, we aim to build on mathematical understanding progressively. We believe that all children should have secure mathematical fluency in order to solve a range of calculations. Within lessons, we aim to provide children with opportunities to access a range of concrete, pictorial and abstract approaches; children are encouraged to see different representations of number.

When learning times tables we place importance on developing a conceptual approach where by tables facts are taught through different representations such as arrays and repeated addition. Children then are more secure in their understanding and are able to adopt a more procedural based approach, which emphasises memorisation and recall of times, table facts. By the Summer term of Year 4, we strive for our children to have accurate recall of their times table facts up to 12x12. 

Implementation: How we teach the subject

We have a clear calculation policy, which outlines the progression of mental and written strategies.  There is a consistent approach to calculation across the school.  Concrete, pictorial and abstract representations are used to embed understanding with each class having access to their own set of equipment. Across the school, we use White Rose schemes of learning to guide our teaching of Mathematics from EYFS to Year 6.

At the start of the lesson, a daily ‘flashback’ is used to consolidate key concepts and enable repeated practice. During lesson inputs, teachers model strategies clearly and encourage the use of mathematical talk.  During our Mathematics lessons, all children work towards achieving the same key question. Scaffolding is provided to enable all children to access the Mathematics independently.  Children who rapidly grasp new concepts are provided with greater depth application activities to encourage them to problem solve and apply their mathematical understanding.

Impact: How we evaluate the knowledge and skills they have learned  

As a result of our Mathematics teaching, you will see happy, engaged children who are all sufficiently challenged. Within books, a variety of activities can be found ranging from fluency, reasoning and problem solving tasks presented in different variations and reflecting CPA approaches.

Through our teaching, we continuously monitor pupil progress against expected attainment for their age and adjust planning accordingly to meet the needs of the class. Each term, we use White Rose end of term assessments, which enable us to track progress, predict future performance and benchmark against national averages. These tests combined with on-going teacher assessment allow teachers to evaluate how individuals, groups and the class as a whole are progressing compared to national expectations.

Progression Map: