Maths
Intent
We recognise the significant role that mathematics plays in our lives today, and its role in the wider world. As such, we aim to give our pupils secure foundations to prepare them for their life beyond St. Andrew's and also an enjoyment of mathematics that supports them in becoming life-long learners. We want to enable them to use their mathematical skills and knowledge confidently in their lives, in a range of different contexts.
Pupils are required to explore Maths in depth, using mathematical vocabulary to reason and explain their workings. A wide range of mathematical resources is used and pupils are taught to show their workings in a concrete fashion, representing their understanding. They are taught to explain their choice of methods and develop their mathematical reasoning skills. We encourage resilience and acceptance that struggle is often a necessary step in learning.
When teaching mathematics at St. Andrew's, we provide a curriculum which caters for the needs of all individuals. We aim to ensure all pupils develop:
- fluency
- reasoning
- problem solving
We incorporate sustained levels of challenge through varied and high quality activities and investigations, which widen their experience and application of mathematical knowledge and skill, and ensure that through collaboration and partnership, they develop skills wider than those that are mathematical.
Implementation
We implement our approach through high quality teaching which delivers appropriately challenging work for all individuals. We use the White Rose Maths Hub plans across school to ensure that there is appropriate breadth and depth in our maths curriculum. To support us we have a range of mathematical resources in classrooms including Numicon, Base10 and Activexpressions. We also use a range of planning resources including those provided by NCETM and NRICH. This enables staff to be more flexible to adapt and meet the needs of a range of learners in their class. We strive to better ourselves and frequently share ideas and activities which have been particularly effective. Through our teaching we continuously monitor pupils’ progress against expected attainment for their age, making formative assessment notes where appropriate and using these to update our summative school tracker. The main purpose of all assessment is to always ensure that we are providing excellent provision for every child.
Our curriculum is organised in a coherent and progressive way through key strands of the mathematics National Curriculum. Children build on their prior learning systematically, making connections across a range of concepts taught, but with regular opportunities to revisit and retrieve prior learning, and make links to new ideas. We ensure that children gain knowledge and skills using concrete, pictorial and abstract methods to support their understanding and growing fluency working between varied representations.
Pupils have many opportunities to practise the basic skills and memorise key number facts such as number bonds and times tables to help them develop greater fluency in their mathematical development. There are also many opportunities for children to develop their mathematical reasoning and problem solving. Independent work provides the means for all children to develop their fluency further, before progressing to more complex related problems. We use online learning platforms TT Rock Stars and Mathletics so that children have opportunities to consolidate work in fun and interactive ways.
We organise interventions for Maths to address misconceptions at the point of learning. Children are given opportunities to address errors, receive further teaching or look at upcoming content and key skills needed, to ensure that we are ambitious and give all pupils the opportunity to succeed in Maths.
Impact
In EYFS the percentage of pupils achieving the Early Learning Goals for Number and Shape, Space and Measures is broadly in line with national outcomes. This ensures that the children are equipped with the skills and knowledge they need to make the move into KS1.
In KS1 and KS2, the percentage of pupils achieving the expected and higher standard is consistently above national averages.
Ongoing formative assessment throughout lessons, and summative results from termly tests, alongside evidence from learning walks, pupil voice and book looks demonstrate that the majority of our pupils are secure in terms of Maths content and using and applying mathematical knowledge, concepts and procedures – this all ensures readiness for the next stage of their learning.
The document belows shows a detailed overview of children's progression in Maths: