Maths Curriculum
Intent
We believe that mathematics is an important part of everyday life and thus it is a key part of our curriculum. We aim to help build a deep understanding of topics, helping children to become confident mathematicians who embrace mathematical challenges, work confidently and enjoy working with numbers. We recognise that mathematics has threads in everyday life and we aim for these to be embedded throughout the school day through use of maths in all situations during the school day, from counting, to time and beyond.
Our maths curriculum is broad and balanced, with opportunities to ensure that all children make progress no matter their starting point. We believe that all children have the opportunity to progress and place great emphasis on the understanding of key mathematical concepts to ensure that children can build on these foundations through their learning. We ensure that children of all ages, use concrete and pictorial representations in their learning to support them to understand the concepts and principles before moving on to abstract representations and application. Children have opportunities to reason about their maths and solve problems to promote a deep understanding.
At Wimborne First School, our maths curriculum is progressive through the Early Years to Year Four. Throughout the Early Years, we develop mathematical vocabulary and knowledge and encourage children to ‘have a go’ and develop a positive attitude towards their maths learning. We believe that a strong grounding in number at this stage is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically and we ensure that children have rich opportunities for them to develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics. As they move through Key Stage One, the principal focus is to ensure that pupils develop confidence and mental fluency with whole numbers, counting and place value. This enables them in Key Stage Two, to progress to become increasingly fluent with whole numbers and the four operations.
Implementation:
The Early Years forms the foundation of maths learning at Wimborne First School. Through our Early Years Provision, we follow the Early Years Framework, alongside Master the Curriculum Maths Guidance and Development Matters. This ensures that our provision and maths lessons are continuously adapted and reviewed so that it meets the interests and needs of the children in the Early Years. During Reception, children also participate in daily 15 minutes of the ‘Mastering Number’ Programme to support and embed their confidence with number and develop their mental maths skills.
At Wimborne First School, our current provision in the delivery of maths across the school from years one to four is to follow the NCTEM Curriculum Prioritisation progression of concepts. This links to the Key Stage 1 and 2 National Curriculum, and we have added in additional units to ensure full National Curriculum coverage. It prioritises the Department for Education Ready to Progress Criteria and also draws upon the DfE Mathematics Guidance (2020). The curriculum is split into units which contain all the small steps to support the children in order to achieve the National Curriculum Objectives and the Ready to Progress Criteria.
Our teaching staff in Key Stages One and Two, use the Curriculum Prioritisation resources to break down each National Curriculum and Ready to Progress objective into small steps, using their professional judgement and their knowledge of their own pupils to decide the most appropriate resources that they may need to support and supplement the learning, such as manipulatives, intelligent practice etc. We aim to follow a Maths Mastery approach which ensures that the pupils are confident in mathematical knowledge and are able to apply their maths to solve a range of problems.
Our maths curriculum is broad and balanced with teachers planning activities for further study to ensure all children make progress no matter their starting point.
We aim to help build a deep understanding of topics, helping children become confident mathematicians who embrace mathematical challenges and enjoy working with numbers. The learning is structured so that the children have the opportunity to become fluent in a skill, apply their knowledge, reason mathematically and solve problems by applying the mathematics. We complete the NCTEM ‘Mastering Number Programme’ in addition to our daily maths lessons in Reception to Year 2. This is to ensure that basic number facts knowledge for addition and subtraction become fluent and are practised and recalled regularly as we believe that these are important to build upon more complex number facts as the maths curriculum progresses.
We believe that times tables and an understanding of multiplication needs to be taught and practiced regularly to ensure that these key number facts recalled fluently. Therefore, throughout the year, Children in year one learn to count in 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s and children in years two, three and four, participate in a regular times table lessons to teach and practise these. The National Curriculum multiplication objectives are taught through these sessions, alongside the relevant block indicated on the overview.
In our maths curriculum, there are key mathematical threads and strategies that progress through year groups and across key stages. Each thread will have a key concept alongside a developing set of vocabulary. On main maths page, there is an overview, which list the skills and knowledge from the National Curriculum and the corresponding Curriculum Prioritisation unit for each year group in turn.
Impact:
Throughout every lesson, teachers make ongoing assessments against the learning objective through Assessment for Learning strategies, and will be reflecting on the children’s learning to adapt the teaching to meet the needs of all children.
The learning is adapted to meet the needs of all children by using adaptive teaching strategies to enable all children to be successful. There are opportunities for children to participate in pre-teach sessions to support them to develop their confidence and knowledge prior to the lesson.
After each lesson, teachers reflect on the success of the children against the learning objective, and revise or adapt their planning as necessary to ensure that the children have a strong and deep understanding of what they have been taught. We believe in developing a deep understanding and children mastering the curriculum and therefore, children will only progress on with their learning when they are secure in the concept being taught.
At the start of each unit of work, children are assessed on the Ready to Progress criteria from the previous year group and any gaps in their knowledge are addressed to ensure that they are ready to progress on. At the end of each unit, the children are assessed against the Ready to Progress Criteria and the National Curriculum objectives to ensure that they have a deep understanding of the concepts taught. These concepts are revisited throughout the year through problem solving activities, mental oral starters and ‘Fluent in Five’ tasks to ensure that the children’s knowledge is secure. Once children are secure in a concept, they have the opportunity to access deepening tasks and show evidence of working at Greater Depth.
Evidence of progression and achievement will be seen in examples of children’s’ work which will be in their Maths books.
Every term, children in Years Two to Four participate in NTS Mathematics Tests to formally assess their mathematical knowledge and these assessments are used to support the teacher’s judgement as to whether a child is meeting age related expectations. Children in Year One participate in these tests in the Summer Term.
Through the Early Years, the children will complete a baseline assessment and then they will be assessed throughout their learning through small group activities and questioning. Children’s responses are recorded and Early Years teachers observe children and their use of mathematical concepts taught through their play. This is recorded as part of their learning journey.
As a result of effective implementation, children will be able to apply their skills and knowledge of maths to a range of different contexts, reasoning and problem solving. They will be able to share their knowledge through discussion when questioned.