Mathematics

Vision

Our maths curriculum enables children to see the importance of maths in everyday life and leads to a greater understanding of the world around them, providing a precise means of communication using numbers, symbols and shapes. Children will grow to see maths as a powerful universal language, used to explain, predict and represent events and tackle problems in everyday life. Through their growing knowledge and understanding, maths will prepare children for the challenges of everyday life, whilst maintaining a fascination of its own.

Rationale

We follow the Primary National Curriculum for all aspects of the maths curriculum. Mathematics is an interconnected subject in which pupils need to be able to move fluently between mathematical ideas. The programmes of study are, by necessity, organised into distinct areas, but pupils will make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems. They will also apply their mathematical knowledge to science and other subjects.

Programme

White Rose Hub and No Nonsense Number Facts complemented by Maths No problem By planning a spiral curriculum, pupils revisit concepts, themes and strands within mathematics multiple times throughout their primary education. Although the complexity of these will increase overtime, new learning builds upon existing knowledge and understanding and children are reminded of the progression – what they already know and where they are going – at each step along the way

The Mastery Approach

The Mastery approach to learning forms the basis our approach to teaching maths. This means spending more time building children’s understanding in a maths area rather than racing through the concepts and knowledge pupils are expected to know by the end of each year. In the past moving through content quickly meant that some children started to develop gaps in their knowledge because they moved on to another area before they had really understood their maths.

Over time, these gaps grew and it was sometimes hard for children to catch up. It also meant that those who understood, never had the chance to become real experts. As a primary school, it is our duty to ensure that children have solid, concrete understanding of subject knowledge and skills as well as being emotionally resilient for the next year of their education. Our intention is take learning at a steady pace to ensure that no child is left behind as well as providing experiences for children who are grasping ideas quickly to really show a deeper understanding.

Our approach focuses on children achieving what is expected of their age group and not going beyond this. Evidence shows that children need to be able to understand a concept, apply it in a wide range of situations and then be creative with it to really understand (or master) it. Simply going beyond the requirements of their age group does not guarantee they have fully understood something – just that they have heard it.They will spend time becoming true masters of content, applying and being creative with new knowledge in multiple ways.

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