Maths
Mathematics at Haddenham St Mary’s
Intent
At Haddenham St Mary’s, we take a mastery approach to the teaching and learning of mathematics. Essentially, our ethos is that all children can be successful in the study of maths. Maths is for everyone and we have high expectations for all our pupils. We teach the skills to ensure our children are resilient learners who become life-long mathematicians. We aim to deliver an inspiring and engaging mathematics curriculum through high quality teaching.
The mastery approach enables children to be numerate, creative, independent, inquisitive, enquiring and confident. Children should not be afraid to make mistakes and should fully embrace the fact that mistakes are part of learning. A mastery curriculum promotes a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject, so that children become fluent in calculations; possess a growing confidence to reason mathematically and improve their problem-solving skills.
The intention of the Maths curriculum at Haddenham St Mary’s, is for children to be excited about maths! Developing a positive attitude to this subject is essential. Teachers promote children’s enjoyment of maths and provide opportunities for children to build a conceptual understanding of maths facilitating application of their knowledge to everyday problems and challenges. We ensure that challenge is provided for all children. Children are encouraged to be brave and push the boundaries, enabling them to deepen their understanding.
Implementation
At Haddenham St Mary’s, we recognise that children need to be confident and fluent across each yearly objective. To ensure consistent coverage, teachers follow the White Rose overview to support their planning.
High quality resources are used in conjunction with White Rose, such as NRich and NCETM to support, stretch and challenge all children within the classroom. In addition, the school’s calculation policy is used to ensure a coherent approach to teaching the operations across our school.
Our curriculum builds on the concrete, pictorial, abstract approach. By using all three, the children can explore and demonstrate their mathematical learning. Together, these elements help to cement knowledge so children truly understand and build upon what they have learnt.
All children when introduced to a new concept for the first time, are encouraged to physically represent mathematical concepts. Objects and pictures are used to demonstrate and visualise abstract ideas, alongside numbers and symbols. Throughout Haddenham St Mary’s School you will see these three methods being used:
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 these pictorial representations, which can then be used to reason and solve problems.
Abstract – with the foundations firmly laid by using the concrete and pictorial methods the children can move onto an abstract approach using numbers and key concepts with confidence.
Vigorous monitoring means that children, who need extra support with their learning, receive high quality intervention time.
Impact
We will be able to see that the children know more and remember more through evidence in their maths books and progress assessments. We will see that they are able to recall prior learning and apply it in a range of unknown contexts, for example, when problem solving or when finding more than one possible answer to a question. Children will be able to explain their understanding through reasoning and justifying the methods they have chosen and how they found the answer. We will see that children will have developed automaticity in the required skills and number facts they need by the end of each year. This will ensure children start their next year of learning with the necessary skills and knowledge to build on their learning.
- Careful and detailed half-termly tracking of children’s progress and attainment will show good progress and secure understanding.
- Measurable impact of interventions will ‘plug gaps’.
- Children will be applying the number facts they have learnt e.g. number bonds, doubles, times tables etc.
- Children will understand and use a range of methods to find all the possible answers to a question or problem.
You can read more about maths mastery and White Rose here:
Useful Documents:
Whole school calculation policy. This sets out the stages through which we teach the 4 operations from Early Years to Y2:
Whole School Maths Policy:
If you wish to help support your child’s maths learning at home, the following suggestions may be useful.
Measurement
- Capacity in the bath! Investigate how much bath water different containers can hold. Which container hold the most?
- Get baking – use scales, read numbers in recipes, discuss amounts etc
- Telling the time – talk about different times in the day, sequences of events, days of the week.
- Estimate & compare – longer/shorter/taller than, heavier/lighter than vocabulary
Money
- Saving and having a coin collection
- Shopping and having own purse.
- Coin rubbings activity- cutting & coin recognition
- How many different ways could we make…
- Counting the coin drops into a cup or jar to encourage skip counting 10p, 20p 30p
Number Facts and Times Tables
- Use songs and actions i.e. Percy Parker
- Dot to dot books/colour by number
- Board games
- Count in multiples before using the times table facts 0, 2, 4, 6, 8
- Learn tables out of sequence and related division facts
- Practical activities to encourage use and application of times tables i.e. setting the table, pairs of socks, shoes, packets of biscuits etc.
Useful Websites:
https://www.tutorhunt.com/tutor-bot/
http://www.ictgames.com/resources.html
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/counting
If you have any queries about mathematics at school, please feel free to contact Mrs Smith (Maths Coordinator) via the school office.
