Mathematics
At Weaverham Forest Primary School, the Maths curriculum is designed to create enthusiastic learners with inquisitive minds. Positive attitudes towards mathematics are promoted through children recognising the importance of maths in our everyday lives through exposure to real-life contexts.
We believe that every child can succeed and make progress in maths through following a mastery approach to teaching. Children are encouraged to be creative with their learning by applying prior knowledge and skills to new concepts, linking common themes and ideas. Developing children's mathematical ideas and explanations are key to mastering and understanding a concept, therefore, opportunities are provided for children to reason and solve problems. High-quality and varied resources ensure that lessons incorporate a level of challenge which deepens mathematical understanding.
Intent:
At Weaverham Forest, we follow a mastery approach to teaching maths. Children will succeed in maths, developing a conceptual understanding which has been built on over time through practice, exploration, investigation and application.
Children will develop declarative knowledge (recall of facts, concepts, rules ...), procedural knowledge (methods, procedures…) and conditional knowledge (reasoning and problem solving through using declarative and procedural knowledge).
Children will have a positive and motivated attitude towards maths, recognising its purpose in everyday life.
Children will:
- Describe and explain their learning to others, sharing their own examples with confidence.
- Make connections between areas of learning and real life.
- Think mathematically in order to explain their learning, reason and solve problems.
- Build resilience when faced with mathematical problems and challenges.
- Recall, use and apply learning in new contexts.
- Represent concepts in a variety of ways: concrete, pictorial, abstract (with symbols).
Concrete - children use concrete objects and manipulatives to represent and understand what they are doing.
Pictorial - transfer concrete manipulatives pictorially to aid reasoning and problem solving.
Abstract - use alongside concrete and pictorial repesntations to link abstract methods and procedures with their uderstanding.
Implement:
Daily Maths lessons ensure that the National Curriculum is delivered through high-quality, engaging resources such as White Rose, NCETM PD materials, NCETM Teaching for Mastery documents, NRiCH ...These resources are used to drive our curriculum at the correct pitch and support children in retaining their knowledge.
Through using the White Rose yearly overview, we ensure thorough coverage of NC objectives and progression across the school. The order may be altered as we identify and prioritize gaps in learning, adapting to the needs of our children. Sequencing of the maths curriculum is important to ensure facts and methods are embedded before introducing new content. Small steps allow us to build on prior knowledge and plan for misconceptions.
Our lesson design exposes children to problems, provides opportunities for them to apply their skills and represent concepts using practical manipulatives. This design, and the use of stem sentences, will reinforce maths in the long term memory.
Fluency Learning:
Basic ‘straight forward’ fluency is practiced and secure before moving on to varied fluency where the children have to think a little deeper. Fluency enables a child to apply a skill in multiple contexts and is the foundation to problem solving.
Morning arithmetic and ‘Flashback Friday’ revisit previously learnt skills. Through this, and specific questioning, children make links between mental and written calculation methods.
Specific mathematical vocabulary is used across the school—progression is based upon the Rising Stars documentation. The concrete, pictorial and abstract approach is followed across the school and is displayed on the class WW. Manipulatives are available in all lessons where it is appropriate and beneficial.
Reasoning Learning: Part of every lesson ...
During fluency, children reason about numbers, apply logical thinking and manipulate numbers or calculations. During problem solving, children reason by making connections between concepts, identifying patterns and making generalisations. Reasoning and problem solving are woven into every lesson.
As a school, we follow the NRICH five levels of reasoning:
- Describe—all children reason here—can be verbally.
- Explain—all children—TA might be questioning.
- Convince
- Justify
- Prove —children making conjectures and generalisations - could be as part of a whole class.
Problem Solving Learning:
Children solve a wide range of routine and non-routine problems within their learning. In order for all children to access these types of problems, practical manipulatives are used as support and/or children may be guided by an adult’s questions. As we follow a mastery approach to teaching maths, depth of knowledge rather than breadth is adopted.
Resources such as NRiCH, NCETM PD materials, Gareth Metcalfe … allow teachers to adapt tasks whilst still working on the same objective.
Impact:
Pupil voice - children will have enthusiasm for the subject and will describe and explain their learning to others, sharing their own examples with confidence. They will develop inquisitive minds where they persevere with maths and make connections across areas, and in real life.
Pitch is inline with NC expectations through the use of the White Rose shemes of learning and the NCETM resources. Each term, moderation is carried out, focusing on specific areas and looking at progression across the school. Teachers use termly tests which have been produced by Testbase.