Maths
“Without mathematics, there’s nothing you can do. Everything around you is mathematics. Everything around you is numbers.” Shakuntala Devi The 2014 National Curriculum for Maths aims to ensure that all children: -Become fluent in the fundamentals of Mathematics Intent Mathematics is not made up of stand-alone areas, it is an interconnected web of concepts and understanding. It is crucial to everyday life, to science, technology and engineering. At Stanley Primary, we believe that a high-quality mathematics education provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the wonder and power of mathematics, and a sense of fun and curiosity about the subject. We want the children at Stanley to become independent problem solvers who show competence in solving sophisticated problems. Our pupils should take risks in their learning and challenge themselves. We strive to develop their ability to make rich connections within the mathematics programme of study, the whole school curriculum and the wider world. We aim to provide opportunities for our more able mathematicians to be stretched appropriately; whilst supporting children who are working below age-related expectations to make significant progress, ensuring that fluency across concepts and in basic number skills is not overlooked. We endeavour to develop an enthusiastic, creative and resilient attitude towards mathematics that will stay with our Stanley pupils throughout their lives. Implementation Our Maths curriculum provides breadth and balance, is relevant and engaging and is differentiated to match the needs and abilities of all our children, ensuring that all pupils are able to excel. As a school, we believe in the importance of following the concrete-pictorial-approach as a means to developing a solid understanding of mathematical concepts which can be applied in a variety of contexts through reasoning and problem-solving challenges. From Year 1 to Year 6, we adhere to our calculation policy which outlines the progression of strategies and methods to be taught and we have an accompanying vocabulary progression document which we also follow. We follow the White Rose medium term planning, altering and adapting the order and activities where necessary. The White Rose planning supports children in learning the fundamentals behind the meanings of numbers and exploring other key mathematical areas, breaking down the teaching sequence into small achievable steps. Where children require additional support, ‘scaffolds’ are used to ensure that they have secured the small step before moving on. These ‘scaffolds’ may be in the form of returning to concrete resources or pictorial representations, colour coding or adult support. For children who understand a concept quicker, challenges are used to deepen learning and encourage links to be made within the curriculum area. Progression documents such as our calculation policy are carefully used to ensure that children are not being stretched outside their year group but rather deepened within it. Within daily teaching, STEM sentences will be modelled and used to encourage the children to discuss and explain mathematical concepts with subject-specific vocabulary. Spaced learning is used, revisiting previous learning, embedding new learning and making concepts ‘stick’. Daily assessment is incorporated throughout the lesson through live and verbal feedback. Termly assessments are used as a diagnostic tool to ensure that teachers are adapting learning to meet the needs of all children and ensure that any necessary interventions are targeted specifically to meet the needs of children. Impact By the end of KS2 we aspire for our Stanley Primary mathematicians to be fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics with a conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. They should have the skills to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of situations with increasing sophistication, including in unfamiliar contexts and to model real-life scenarios. Children will be able to reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry and develop and present a justification, argument or proof using mathematical language. Our Maths Curriculum Overview
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