Maths

INTENT: 

Our main wish for Snape children is that they leave with a love Maths, feel entirely comfortable manipulating numbers, exploring patterns and 'talking' maths. We want to ensure they become Maths loving adults who say they enjoyed maths when they were at school rather than saying I hated it.

At Snape we recognise that mathematics is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. STEM is one of our Rainbow values - we try to raise the profile of all of these subjects whenever we can.

We are committed to ensuring that children are able to recognise the importance of Maths in the wider world and that they are also able to use their mathematical skills and knowledge confidently in a range of different contexts. We aim to ensure that our children have access to a high quality mathematics curriculum that is both challenging and enjoyable. We want to develop our children into confident mathematicians who are not afraid to take risks. Children need opportunities to make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems. It is vital for the children to be able to see how mathematics is relevant to their world, and applicable to everyday life.  

We want all children to enjoy mathematics and to experience success in the subject, with the ability to reason mathematically.

Mastery is a continuum. We believe mastery is only going to be achieved when more time is spent on key concepts that are revisited and reviewed. This allows for the development of depth and sufficient practice to embed learning. 

IMPLEMENTATION:  

We follow the White Rose Maths schemes of learning from EYFS to Year 6. White Rose Maths is a cumulative curriculum in whichmathematical topics are taught, built upon & revisited through other topics throughout the year. We have adopted the White Rose schemes of learning with a few adjustments to its sequencing to match our context and terms, but number is seen as the building block for all other areas of maths & is taught first before being revisited through measurement, geometry etc. We teach for mastery using the CPA approach (concrete, pictorial, abstract), & aim to conduct same or next day intervention to allow all children to move through the curriculum at broadly the same pace, with misconceptions & procedural errors being addressed in a timely manner.

Based on good AfL, our teachers make decisions about when to progress children, based on the security of pupils’ understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage. This does not mean that ‘we hold children back’ and that all children access the same questions and same activities all of the time. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly are challenged by ‘going deeper’, being offered rich and more sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content.  This is particularly vital in our classes where we teach more than one year group. A ceiling is not put on children’s learning and flexible grouping is adopted based on pre-assessments

We use White Rose Maths from Reception to Y6 as the basis of our curriculum, which is designed to support teachers in all aspects of their planning whilst delivering a Maths Mastery curriculum effectively. We also supplmenet this with investative tasks and practical games - for example from the NRich problem solving site. We also incorporate topic led investigations as much as we can and are continuing, with the children's ideas too, to build up a range of activiities. For example, when studying the Stone Age and all our timelines we look at how many years have passed. We have compared the River Amazon with the River Alde and looked at how long Anglo Saxon boats were compared with modern day boats.

The use of a mastery approach incorporates three key elements: concrete, pictoral and abstract, in helping children explore and demonstrate mathematical ideas, enrich their learning experience and deepen their understanding. 

• Concrete – children have the opportunity to use concrete objects and manipulatives to help them understand and explain what they are doing.

• Pictorial– children then build on this concrete approach by using pictorial representations, which can then be used to reason and solve problems.

• Abstract – With the foundations firmly laid, children can move to an abstract approach using numbers and key concepts with confidence.

Lessons are planned and sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before.  We are developing techniques that ensure after a topic has been taught it is continuously revisited as the year progresses, allowing the knowledge to become embedded, developed and giving the children the chance to deepen their understanding. Three times a week we start with Rex Retrieval which covers aspects we may not have taught for a while. For example , covering 2D shape or asking a vocabulary question. We also deliver a mental maths oral starters which involves counting, a quick game like bingo or quick fire quesitons using number fans.

Staff refer to the Calculation Policy when teaching formal methods, ensuring consistency and progression across school.  Reasoning is also taught alongside calculation methods at all times.

In the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), we relate the mathematical aspects of the children’s work to the Development Matters statements and the Early Learning Goals (ELG), as set out in the EYFS profile document.

Mathematics development involves providing children with opportunities to practise and improve their skills in counting numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems, and to describe shapes, spaces, and measures.

We continually observe and assess children against these areas using age-related objectives, and plan the next steps in their mathematical development in response to this. There are opportunities for children to encounter maths throughout the EYFS provision – through planned activities and the self-selection of easily accessible quality maths resources

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. Children also have opportunities to develop their fluency, apply their reasoning skills problem solving skills during daily maths sessions. We look at, for example, how their confidence explaining their thought processes, how systematic they are in their problem solving and also watch their recall becoming speedier as they become more confident.

Overall we look at outcomes in the following areas:

• All children making good progress  in maths from their starting points

• • All children using precise mathematical vocabulary in maths lessons & when discussing maths outside maths lessons

• • All children accessing reasoning & problem solving questions regularly

• • An increasingly positive attitdue to Maths leaving with a confidence in and love of the subject.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through marking and feedback AND

Summative assessment of pupils’ skills using White Rose end of unit tests and end of term assessments which are inputted into our Insight Tracking system.

Children also complete the Yr 2 Maths Sats, the Yr 4 multiplication test and Year 6 Maths tests.