Intent
During their time at Cockfield Primary School children will:
- Secure the basic skills (knowledge of number facts, ability to perform all 4 operations and understanding of place value) which will ensure that they are able to proficiently apply mathematics to real life in the future.
- Learn mathematical skills in a progressive manner which will provide sufficient opportunity to rehearse applying skills to develop fluency and then extend to applying these in real life contexts to solve problems.
- Develop independence when solving problems.
- Develop depth of thought when reasoning through the act of solving a problem.
- Develop a love for the challenges that the subject of Maths brings.
Implementation
Learning is the long-term retention of skills and knowledge and the ability to transfer it to new contexts. Children learn best through direct instruction, having the opportunity to apply these skills to develop fluency, extending this to applying these skills to help to solve problems and then having opportunity to revisit previous learning in a range of different contexts.
In Nursery we teach maths through some ‘carpet time’ and through play experiences throughout the school day. Children begin to develop a sense of number and learn some basic counting skills.
In Reception we teach maths daily through a planned session of carpet time and also through play experiences in the different areas of learning. Over the year these become more structured and challenging to ensure that our children are ready for all of the challenges of Year 1.
Our children start their learning journey in nursery and reception where they develop a strong grounding in number and develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically. We provide children with frequent and varied opportunities to build and apply their understanding of number and the relationships between and the patterns within them. We provide rich opportunities for children to develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics including shape, space and
measures. We aim to develop positive attitudes and interests in mathematics, teach children to look for patterns and relationships, spot connections, ‘have a go’, and talk to adults and peers about what they notice and not be afraid to make mistakes.
Children learn about maths through play and their daily experiences. And the more meaningful to them and hands on it is, the better. Concrete manipulatives and pictorials are used to represent new concepts to the children supporting their conceptual understanding. The use of hooks and real life problems is used to support the deeper understanding of the mathematical concept. Both indoor and outdoor areas are full of mathematical opportunities including lots of exciting things for children to explore, sort, compare, count, calculate and describe. This ensures we support them to be creative, resilient, critical thinkers, problem solvers and to have a go.
In KS1 and KS2, we teach maths every day following the same structure of every lesson (this helps to remove ‘Cognitive Load’ for our children – how much we can think about at one time)
- Arithmetic revision – revisiting prior arithmetic learning
- Counting
- Explicit teaching
- Opportunity to apply explicit teaching – fluency, varied fluency, reasoning and/or problem solving.
- Whole class problem solving
Our curriculum is planned based on the White Rose Long Term plans and the small steps in learning for each key concept. However our teachers select teaching resources and activities from a range of different sources to ensure that learning is sequenced and progressive.
We use the Cockfield Primary School Calculation Policy Maths Calculation – Progression of Skills to ensure that all teaching is taught consistently.
Regular learning and practise is essential in order to develop a rapid recall of number facts, efficiency in procedures and a deepened knowledge of mathematical concepts. Therefore, our curriculum is planned progressively, allowing children to build on their previous knowledge so that they can fully immerse themselves and have opportunities to reflect and build on prior learning. Our long term plan allows each class to develop their prior learning from the previous year. The key knowledge and skills that children acquire and develop throughout each year have been mapped to ensure progression between year groups throughout the school.
Maths Teaching in school consists of:
- Direct instruction – explicit instruction of basic skills which children can then copy to become fluid.
- Retrieval Practice – Independent and guided practice of previously taught concepts, facts and procedures.
- Fluency Development – A fast-paced recall of facts and arithmetic skills to develop fluency and efficiency.
- Mastery Teaching – Units of teaching broken down into small, focused steps of learning to support learning, provide opportunity for practice and encourage purposeful application.
We develop children’s understanding of all mathematical concepts in a structured manner which enables them to develop their understanding from a concrete manner, on to a pictorial manner and then finally to a abstract concept, which enables them to transfer to their learning to a much wider range of ideas.
Impact
The impact of our mathematics curriculum is that children leave Cockfield Primary School more ‘in love with’ Maths then when they started. This is because they understand the relevance of what they are learning in relation to real world concepts, they have secured key skills and knowledge into their long term memory and they use these with confidence. We have fostered an environment where Maths is fun and it is OK to be ‘wrong’ because the journey to finding an answer is most important.
Our children have a growth mindset and they make measurable progress against their own targets. Our maths books are packed with a range of activities showing the children’s journey through fluency, reasoning and problem solving skills.
Our feedback and interventions are supporting children to strive to be the best mathematicians they can be ensuring a greater proportion of children are on track. Children ‘have a go’ and choose the equipment they need to help them to learn along with the strategies they think are best suited to each problem. Children are developing skills in being articulate and are able to verbally, pictorially and in written form, reason well. Our school standards are high; we moderate our books both internally and externally and children are achieving well.
Over the last academic year, we have worked with the Durham LA ‘Multiply’ project to develop parents/carers understanding of basic maths skills. Here are the Powerpoints which were developed as part of these sessions and are aimed at helping our families to gain a greater understanding of how we teach maths.
Resources for families to use at home:
Reception and Y1 children have a log on for this
Y2-Y6 have a log on for this
