Intent

The 2014 National Curriculum for Maths aims to ensure that all children:

• Become fluent in the fundamentals of Mathematics
• Can reason mathematically
• Can solve problems by applying their Mathematics

At Landulph, these skills are embedded within Maths lessons and developed consistently over time. We are committed to ensuring that children can recognise the importance of Maths in the wider world and that they are also able to use their mathematical skills and knowledge confidently in their lives in a range of different contexts.

We want all children to enjoy Mathematics and to experience success in the subject, with the ability to reason mathematically. We are committed to developing children’s curiosity about the subject, as well as an appreciation of the beauty and power of Mathematics.

Implementation

The content and principles underpinning the 2014 Mathematics curriculum have allowed us to make use of White Rose as a tool to characterise our approach and convey how our curriculum is implemented:

• Teachers reinforce an expectation that all children can achieve high standards in Mathematics.
• Most children progress through the curriculum content at the same pace; significant time is spent developing deep knowledge of the key ideas that are needed to underpin future learning. This ensures that all can master concepts before moving to the next part of the curriculum sequence, allowing no pupil to be left behind.
• If a pupil fails to grasp a concept or procedure, this is identified quickly and early intervention ensures the pupil is ready to move forward with the whole class in the next lesson.
• The structure and connections within the mathematics are emphasised, so that pupils develop deep learning that can be sustained.
• Lesson design identifies the new mathematics that is to be taught, the key points, the difficult points and a carefully sequenced journey through the learning. In a typical lesson, pupils sit facing the teacher and the teacher leads back and forth interaction, including questioning, short tasks, explanation, demonstration, and discussion.
• Practice and consolidation play a central role. Carefully designed variation within this builds fluency and understanding of underlying mathematical concepts.
• Teachers use precise questioning in class to test conceptual and procedural knowledge and assess children regularly to identify those requiring intervention, so that all children keep up.
• Children’s explanations and their proficiency in articulating mathematical reasoning, with the precise use of mathematical vocabulary, are supported using stem sentences provided by the teacher.
• Key facts such as multiplication tables and addition facts within 10 are learnt to automaticity to avoid cognitive overload in the working memory and enable pupils to focus on new concepts.

To ensure whole school consistency and progression, Landulph uses the nationally recognised White Rose Maths scheme. The White Rose curriculum is a cumulative curriculum, so that once a topic is covered, it is met many times again in other contexts. For example, place value is revisited in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

The curriculum is designed to have an emphasis on number, with a large proportion of time spent reinforcing number to build competency. We have introduced ‘Mastery at Number’ in KS1 which provides an extra 15 minutes of maths learning per day to focus upon number recognition, number bond and early arithmetic skills in order to embed these fundamentals for each child ahead of learning more complex mathematical processes and to reduce the cognitive load required.

Lessons are planned to provide plenty of opportunities to build reasoning and problem-solving elements into the curriculum. When introduced to a new concept, children can use concrete objects and manipulatives to help them understand what they are doing. Alongside this, children are encouraged to use pictorial representations. These representations can then be used to help reason and solve problems. Both concrete and pictorial representations support children’s understanding of abstract methods.

Mathematical topics are taught in blocks, to enable the achievement of ‘mastery’ over time. These teaching blocks are broken down into smaller steps, to help children understand concepts better. This approach means that children do not cover too many concepts at once which can lead to cognitive overload. Each lesson phase provides the means for children to achieve greater depth, with children who are quick to grasp new content, being offered rich and sophisticated problems, within the lesson as appropriate.

Mathematical language is used consistently across the school to aid the children’s understanding and to be able to refer with specificity to elements of a calculation.

Mathematics in the Early Years EYFS follow the White Rose Reception scheme of work and all children will be taught a discreet maths lesson each day. This session will last 20-30 minutes and will involve teaching a specific skill or concept and a group or independent activity. The teaching structure embeds Early Learning Goals and is built upon sequentially and in a spiral fashion to cover and recover the following core concepts: Comparison Counting Cardinality Composition Spatial Awareness Shape Pattern Measure In addition to these planned activities, children can also self-select Maths resources to consolidate their learning during child-initiated activities. We recognise the importance of play-based learning and therefore encourage children to develop their understanding during their play. All activities are based on practical real-life contexts to encourage inquisitive minds and develop critical thinking linked to their areas of interest.   Regular observations and assessments help to ensure that children that need additional intervention to consolidate their mathematical understanding are identified and supported by appropriate interventions.

Impact

The school has a supportive ethos and our approaches support the children in developing their collaborative and independent skills, as well as empathy and the need to recognise the achievement of others. Students can underperform in Mathematics because they think they cannot do it or are not naturally good at it. The school’s use of White Rose Maths addresses these preconceptions by ensuring that all children experience challenge and success in Mathematics by developing a growth mindset.

Regular and ongoing assessment informs teaching, as well as intervention, to support and enable the success of each child. This assessment takes place in the form of summative and formative methods to allow for immediate identification of misconceptions and to track progress over longer periods.

Progress in maths is formally assessed on a termly basis through White Rose arithmetic and problem-solving tests and multiplication accuracy is assessed using Mathsframe. The children’s comprehension of each unit of teaching is assessed using an end of unit test and any misconceptions are quickly addressed using interventive methods.

The Curriculum Leader for Maths is: David Finnimore