Mathematics

Vision Statement

At St. Andrew’s, we recognise the vital role of mathematics in helping children to understand the world around them, enabling their curiosity and ability to critically think, reason and persevere. By providing a highly-effective and progressive journey of mathematics throughout our school, we will build children’s proficiency with essential mathematical knowledge and skills, as well as nurturing their confidence, courage and resilience for solving a wide range of problems. Pupils’ maths learning will be underpinned by a deep understanding of the connections in and across mathematics, as well as with other subjects, and to everyday situations. Mastering these fundamentals will create successful learners and thinkers, who are well-prepared to flourish in their next stages in education and beyond. 

Intent Statement

Why do we teach this / what are we trying to achieve?  

  • Curriculum Design in Mathematics 

Our challenging and carefully-designed mathematics curriculum will enable all pupils to make effective progress, securing a deep understanding and mathematical proficiency in line with the National Curriculum 2014 and Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. 

  • Maths Attitudes 

We strive to inspire in pupils a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about all aspects of mathematics, understanding its relevance and importance in everyday life and for their futures. 

  • Arithmetic Fluency 

At each stage of their mathematical journey, pupils will further build upon their strong foundation of arithmetic skills, achieving mathematical recall with automaticity, as well as developing the flexibility to use and apply efficient strategies across all operations with fluency and understanding. 

  • Deep, Conceptual Learning  

Our pupils will gain a deep level of understanding behind the mathematical concepts that they learn, securing a ‘mastery’ of the curriculum, and allowing them to forge and utilise links between different areas of maths, as well as across the wider curriculum (for example within science and technology). 

  • Thinking and Reasoning 

We encourage and support our pupils in developing critical thinking and reasoning skills in mathematics. Our pupils will master the ability to communicate mathematical ideas clearly and draw upon an excellent knowledge and understanding of mathematical vocabulary (interconnecting with the development of strong English language skills). 

  • Problem Solving 

Pupils will be equipped with the mathematical skills and strategies, as well as behaviours such as perseverance, which are essential for solving increasingly complex problems in maths and in the world around them. 

  • Confident, Independent Learners  

Pupils will become independent learners who have the courage to take risks, try different approaches, and seek support when needed, as well as to use their own expertise to coach others. They will thrive upon challenges, and collaborate and communicate well with others. This will ensure that pupils secure excellent mathematical approaches that will make them well-equipped for the next stage in their education. 

Implementation Statement

What will it look like in the classroom?  How do we translate our vision into practice?

Curriculum Design in Mathematics

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE YEAR 1 TO 6 MATHEMATICS SCHEME.

St. Andrew’s is embedding a ‘mastery’ curriculum for mathematics, rooted in the ‘Five Big Ideas’ (NCETM) of Teaching for Mastery in Mathematics. Teachers follow the White Rose Maths framework to structure and sequence the teaching of mathematics, so that progression of knowledge and skills builds effectively in small steps, and to ensure that the fundamentals of place value, number and calculation are prioritised and well-developed. This programme assists teachers in delivering a ‘mastery’-based curriculum, with emphasis on developing fluency and problem solving by exploring links and connections, exposing conceptual and procedural variation, and using ‘intelligent practice’ to develop reasoning and mathematical thinking. By using the White Rose Maths scheme, fundamental skills are retrieved, revisited and applied by pupils within subsequent strands of mathematics. 

Pupils are taught mathematics every day, with the class working together on the same content at the same time. Pupils in Reception, Year One and Year Two follow an additional scheme to develop strong number sense and fluency in number facts, called the ‘Mastering Number’ programme (NCETM). Children in Key Stage Two also follow a programme of teaching in addition to their main lesson, to ensure number fluency. Although there are mixed age classes at St. Andrew’s (currently mixed R/1 and mixed Y1/2), Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 pupils are taught their maths in single age groups to allow for focused and effective teaching and progression within their year group’s curriculum expectations.

Early Years

Reception pupils follow the Development Matters document (click here to view the Development Matters document), and are taught maths daily through the Mastering Number programme (from NCETM) to ensure depth of learning in early number, alongside the White Rose Maths scheme for Reception. This takes place via whole-class adult-led input, as well as regular opportunity for consolidation and for pupils to independently access maths learning opportunities through their continuous provision and directed activities.

Clear policy and expectations for maths curriculum:

Years 1-6 Calculation Policy for Addition and Subtraction

Years 1-6 Calculation Policy for Multiplication and Division

A set of non-negotiables for teaching and learning in maths are adhered to across the school to ensure our maths vision is fulfilled. This includes clear guidelines to uphold our commitment to embed a ‘mastery approach’ to the teaching of mathematics throughout the school. Supporting this, teachers follow comprehensive calculation policies. We encourage pupils to follow and celebrate positive mathematic behaviours with our ‘Mastering Maths’ posters, which are displayed in classrooms and referred to, helping pupils to reflect on the behaviours that mathematicians should develop and demonstrate.

Teaching and learning strategies:

Following a ‘mastery’ curriculum, pupils experience a ‘CPA journey’ through mathematical concepts (concrete-pictorial-abstract). They regularly use carefully-selected practical equipment, representations and images, and resources that will expose the learning concepts and allow for deep understanding and for connections to be made. To develop mathematical fluency, pupils are given plenty of opportunity to practise current and prior learning, using varied question types and tasks to facilitate this, during maths lessons, morning maths (Mathletics), their Fluency session and for their homework (through our whole school Star Maths programme and our KS2 maths homework routine). Skilful questioning throughout a lesson probes and deepens pupils’ understanding, and promotes pupils’ ability to reason, explain and make connections. Mixed-ability pairings are very often used in maths lessons, to promote interaction and effective ‘maths talk’ and peer coaching, resulting in raised confidence for all abilities. Whole class discussion and evaluation of maths learning is prominent, as this enables quick identification of misconceptions, and allows the teacher to provide rapid intervention and opportunity to extend learning.

Marking, ongoing assessment and feedback:

The marking policy at St. Andrew’s ensures children receive verbal or written feedback that celebrates achievement, and analyses and addresses misconceptions readily, to inform the next step towards securing or extending learning within and across lessons. Teachers’ ongoing assessment during lessons, and following lessons, allows them to give pupils the right level of scaffolding or challenge to further their learning. Live marking in lessons supports teachers in quickly identifying and rectifying pupils needing support, or extending with immediate or rapid intervention.

Assessment and Review:

Our curriculum design and organisation recognises that the ongoing assessment-for-learning cycle is at the heart of securing effective progress for pupils. This is in the form of continual teacher observation and evidence-collecting in lessons, and through self and peer assessment and reflections. As a result of assessments gathered in this way, the teacher provides timely intervention as needed, and modifies teaching plans accordingly.  In addition to this, a termly capture of longer-term summative assessment is carried out. By tracking pupil performance on a termly basis, we can ensure that any pupils or groups not making expected levels of progress are identified and provision is quickly made. Regular monitoring by the maths leader, along with termly Pupil Progress Meetings with the Senior Leadership Team, ensure that pupils meet attainment and progress targets, and that intervention is effective.

Maths Attitudes

Pupils learn the importance of mathematics through many experiences: their lessons; special theme days such as Maths Adventure Days or World Maths Day activities; visitors to school; competitions such as Times Tables Rockstars battles; assemblies; displays and special celebrations that are dedicated to maths. These support pupils’ positive maths attitudes, such as enjoyment and curiosity, and also to help them foster important connections between maths and the wider curriculum and the world around them. Pupils’ valuable views and responses are sought through pupil questionnaires and interviews, as well as learning walks, so that the maths leader can use pupil voice to evaluate and develop the impact of the maths curriculum upon pupils’ attitudes.

Fluency in Number

In addition to our carefully-constructed curriculum design as described above, St. Andrew’s pupils are given lots of extra opportunities to develop arithmetic fluency:

  • Each class has a ‘morning maths’ session when they arrive at school (called Mathletics) where key arithmetic skills are revisited and remodelled.
  • Reception, Year One and Year Two pupils take part in a short daily ‘Mastering Number’ session where they focus on developing a strong number sense and fluency within numbers up to 20.
  • Each pupil in Years 1 to 6 participates in the ‘Star Maths’ programme (a booklet scheme, with year-group-specific maths recall and fluency-based skills that are set as targets to be practised at home and in school).
  • Pupils from Year Two upwards are subscribed to ‘Times Tables Rockstars’; they use this platform as an engaging tool to practise and develop quick recall of multiplication and division facts in school and at home.
  • Pupils in Reception, Years 1 and 2 access the ‘NumBots’ program at home to help provide them with extra practice on key early number concepts.
  • Pupils in Key Stage Two are set additional written or online maths homework to consolidate and retrieve recent maths learning in order to embed it.
  • A more detailed ‘fluency programme’ from Years 1 to 6 has been implemented as a 10-15 minute session that is in addition to the main maths lesson.

Deep, Conceptual Learning

Through our mastery approach to mathematics, a new concept or skill is very carefully introduced and explored with the whole class, using ‘variation’ to allow pupils to see patterns, relationships and structures that allow them to make links and apply their learning.

St. Andrew’s staff recognise the impact of a C-P-A approach (concrete – pictorial – abstract) to learning. We provide concrete experiences as the foundation for conceptual understanding, and the use of carefully-chosen concrete apparatus runs through the school to expose key elements of a wide range of maths. This approach is specified in our Calculation Policy (White Rose), and includes equipment such as multi-link blocks, rekenreks, bead strings, objects, ten frames, Numicon, Base Ten, place value counters, shapes, measuring equipment, fraction tiles etc. Teachers understand that varied pictorial representations provide a bridge from the concrete experiences to the abstract number, therefore a wide range of pictorial representations are modelled for pupils to adopt as a strategy to calculate or represent a problem. These include arrays, part-whole models, representations of objects to add and subtract, bar models, number lines, fraction walls, diagrams and place value charts.

Thinking and Reasoning

Critical thinking, reasoning and explaining in maths – and across the curriculum – is encouraged, modelled and celebrated in lessons. Pupils are asked questions – and are encouraged to ask them too – to allow critical thinking and reasoning. Teachers continually model and share things that have been noticed, wondered and explained, in order to enhance pupils’ understanding. Mathematical thinking is prompted and developed through the daily lesson, as teachers provide probing questions to reason about maths and interrogate learning. St. Andrew’s also devised an emoji character – ‘Dig Deeper Dave’ – to highlight and to allow children to understand a range of different thinking and reasoning ideas that can be used in maths (and other areas). A range of open-ended and analytical questions, including ‘examples’ and ‘non-examples’, are used by teachers to probe understanding, spark curiosity and encourage pupils to generalise and explain their ideas and findings. Teachers also use stem sentences and generalisations to help pupils communicate their methods and findings with precise mathematical language.

Problem Solving

St. Andrew’s ensures problem solving remains at the heart of the maths curriculum by providing regular opportunities for pupils to apply new skills and knowledge to a variety of problem types within lessons, once a skill has been developed. Teachers provide some discrete teaching of problem-solving skills, to increase pupils’ knowledge and evaluation of strategies, as well as to develop pupils’ stamina and resilience when faced with challenge. 

Confident, Independent Learners

Maths lessons are designed so that lesson starting points are always accessible to all learners, in order for them to build confidence and independence, along with regular ‘back and forth’ exploration of concepts in small steps. Lots of mathematical talk between teacher and pupils, and also pupils in mixed-ability groupings, allows confidence to develop. Mixed ability groupings allow pupils to learn from others’ coaching, explanations, questions and mistakes – developing their independent use of rich maths vocabulary. Each lesson will include time for independent work in order to apply learning independently, during which time pupils will be provided with the appropriate support to allow them to access and progress effectively with the lesson. Teachers aim to celebrate mistakes, celebrate demonstration of mathematical behaviours to help build confidence and develop a can-do attitude and positive mind-set towards achieving their mathematical goals.

Parental engagement in maths:

Parents and carers are encouraged to and supported to get involved with their child’s maths learning journey:

  • All pupils (Year 1 – 6) have a St. Andrew’s ‘Star Maths’ booklet from which they are set a weekly or fortnightly mental maths target to practise at home; this allows parents to become familiar with mathematical recall and mental arithmetic expectations for their child, and support key areas of their maths learning. This means that regular contact and communication between school and home is established in relation to maths.
  • Other homework tasks (see Homework Policy for homework expectations for each year group) also offer parents further awareness and opportunities to support maths learning, and consolidate learning that has taken place in school. This also includes use of Times Tables Rockstars, Century and NumBots online tools.
  • Parents are given a detailed and personalised account of their child’s attainment and progress in maths at three points throughout the year: an autumn and spring parent consultation with the class teacher/s, and a summer term written report.
  • To support parents further, we ensure that key documents and useful tools and updates are shared, such as our calculation policy (available on the school website). Class Dojo posts from the class teacher sometimes allow parents further insight into class maths learning.

We understand that parents can sometimes feel like maths teaching has changed and that it can be difficult to know how to approach some of the mathematics you are supporting your child with. The ‘Maths with Michael’ short video series illustrates our current approach to teaching number in school really well for parents and carers.

The White Rose Home Learning site also provides free access to teaching videos for every step of your child’s year group curriculum, demonstrating exactly how your child will be taught.

Maths Subject Review and Development:

The maths leader ensures that St. Andrew’s continually updates and reviews maths provision and its impact, based upon focused monitoring and the latest research and pedagogy. We are outward-looking and use subject network meetings, CPD and collaboration with the North Mids Maths Hubs and NCETM, collaboration via MAT-wide Maths Leader meetings, and maths advisory support to continually gain further insight into current developments in mathematics teaching. INSET and staff meeting time (including our Higher-Level Teaching Assistants) is dedicated to providing staff with quality, targeted CPD to strengthen our maths provision. Teachers, teaching assistants and HLTAs all play an active part in maths development, particularly through INSET training, staff meetings and regular updates.