Intent:
In line with the 2014 National Curriculum our aim is to provide a high-quality mathematics education which equips children with the skills to change the world. The curriculum will teach children key knowledge and skills. Children will have the opportunity to gain an understanding of all areas of mathematics. Our curriculum will be carefully planned so that there is a clear learning sequence which builds on what children have learnt previously. Our curriculum will be well differentiated so that all children are able access it and make good progress. Opportunities will be provided to stretch and challenge children through differentiation in class but also through deepening their knowledge through teaching for mastery. It is our intent to provide children with opportunities to develop fluency, reasoning and problem solving.
Implementation:
We use the National Curriculum as the starting point to implement our curriculum. Teachers use end of year expectations to ensure that the correct knowledge and skills are taught each year. Long term plans follow the White Rose scheme of learning, but teachers have the flexibility to adapt timings to the needs of their class. Teachers plan using a range of resources which includes but is not limited to: White Rose, Power Maths, Testbase, Hamilton Trust, Target Your Maths, CGP and Times Tables Rockstars.
A mastery approach is taken towards teaching, following the five big ideas of; coherence, representation and structure, mathematical thinking, fluency, and variation. Across the school, new topics are introduced and explored using a Concrete – Pictorial – Abstract (CPA) approach. Children of all ages and ability are encouraged to apply ‘Dive Deeper’ questions to their learning to enable them to think more deeply about a question, the various ways it could be represented, solved, proved, explained or changed.
Dedicated problem-solving lessons in all classes help children to have time to think and ‘play’ with problems. This teaches them how to identify the relationships between information, weigh up the features of a problem, develop multiple strategies, reflect on their choice of strategy, communicate their reasoning and increase their resilience.
High quality CPD underpins the curriculum with teachers having the opportunity to develop their practice through internal and external CPD. Staff have received CPD in a number of areas including, but not limited to: reasoning and problem solving; stretch and challenge and developing feedback. The subject leader monitors the quality of education in mathematics alongside the SLT. A named governor monitors and provides challenge and support reporting to the curriculum committee.
When implementing our curriculum we tailor it to meet the needs of the children. Mathematics is taught daily and in addition to this, children have additional opportunities for extra arithmetic based work, where appropriate, during early morning work and straight after lunch using CGP books and the White Rose Flashback 4. Assessment is used to inform planning with cold tasks used to assess prior knowledge (so teaching can be adapted accordingly) and hot tasks used to assess children’s knowledge at the end of a unit of work, so teachers can determine if further whole class input or intervention is required. Mid-year and end-of-year Testbase papers are also taken by classes 1 to 5 (with Year 6 doing past SATs papers) and gap analysis carried out to identify gaps in learning.
Impact:
A mathematical concept or skill has been mastered when a child can show it in multiple ways, using the mathematical language to explain their ideas, and can independently apply the concept to new problems in unfamiliar situations.