At The Hundred of Hoo Primary Academy, we believe that the development of mathematics skills and knowledge are vital, not only for children to succeed at school, but also to become successful and resilient adults. Being fluent with numbers, understanding patterns and using logic and problem solving skills are all essential parts of everyday life and help us to understand and change the world around us.
We aim for all children to leave us as competent and confident ‘masters’ of maths, with deep conceptual and procedural knowledge and an enjoyment of the challenges that mathematics provides. We believe that every child can achieve in maths and want our children to leave us as independent, reflective thinkers, whose skills not only enable them in maths but also support them across the whole curriculum.
Core Aims in Mathematics:
- To promote a positive attitude towards mathematics and to enable pupils to develop their confidence in the subject and a motivation to succeed
- To ensure that all children achieve to their highest potential in mathematics and that all pupils are challenged
- To offer a curriculum that allows children to at least meet the age related expectations of the National Curriculum at the end of each key stage
- To allow pupils to see how mathematics is relevant to their everyday life
- To provide opportunities for pupils to use and apply their mathematics skills in real life contexts through the PYP lines of inquiry wherever possible.
At The Hundred of Hoo Primary Academy, we know how important developing and improving skills and knowledge over time are to developing progression. Our curriculum is designed to allow children to make rich connections and to be able to reason, problem solve and develop fluent conceptual understanding so that learners deepen and broaden their knowledge and skills. We use the Power Maths long term overviews and schemes of learning to ensure that our planned curriculum details the core facts, concepts, methods and strategies that give our pupils the best chance of developing proficiency. We sequence the teaching of linked facts and methods to take advantage of the way that knowing facts helps learn methods and vice versa.
The curriculum is broken into small steps of learning that carefully sequences content so that our mathematics curriculum is a guarantee of long term learning. These small steps take into account the hierarchy of knowledge and skills within maths and build these sequentially and progressively to support children in successfully achieving their end goals. Each step builds on the previous learning steps and interweaves prior content with new concepts, which helps children to grasp the links between topics and to understand them more deeply.
Consolidation and retrieval practice is used wisely to revisit any misconceptions, link learning and recap knowledge already taught. This also allows us to address misconceptions or gaps that children may have so that children can stay up with their peers rather than fall behind. All lessons include opportunities to revisit previously learned knowledge, concepts and procedures; to ensure that, once learned, mathematical knowledge becomes deeply embedded in pupils’ memories. This allows rapid and accurate recall and frees pupils’ attention so they can work with increasing independence, apply their mathematical knowledge to more complex concepts and procedures and gain enjoyment through a growing self-confidence in their ability.
Subject Leadership and Knowledge
Our White Rose schemes of learning frame the curriculum to support teachers in planning effectively sequenced learning that builds on prior knowledge and skills. We ensure that teachers have good subject knowledge through continuing professional development led by the maths subject leader and supported by the Trust Curriculum Advisor for Maths. We work in collaboration and moderate with other Trust academies and through the teacher research group led by the local maths hub. Our Maths Leads ensure that our school intent is enacted across the school through learning walks, moderation, pupil and staff voice and informal discussions with teachers.
We use a variety of teaching and learning styles in lessons; this will allow for teachers to choose how to most effectively ensure conceptual understanding. We use Assessment for Learning opportunities to inform next steps. We endeavor to set work that meets the needs of all children but is also challenging so that all children have opportunities to master the concepts.
We expect opportunities for pupils to engage in talk:
- developing the children’s oral confidence and ability to reason and explain their thinking by encouraging them to answer in full sentences.
- using sentence starters and stem sentences to scaffold their responses and feed into how the children record the reasoning into their books.
- encouraging them to build upon what their peers say and equally challenge one another.
We follow a Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract approach:
- concrete manipulatives are used to introduce new concepts – children can physically manipulate to explore structure and construct meaning
- pictorial representations are used to support making connections and transferring understanding, building a bridge to the abstract concepts
- teachers choose the manipulatives carefully to use what will best scaffold understanding
- where appropriate, children will be given some agency, choosing the best manipulative or representation to solve a problem for themselves
Our lessons provide opportunities for, and engage pupils in:
- group work
- paired work
- whole class teaching
- individual work
- practical work
- investigation work
- problem-solving
- mathematical discussion
- consolidation
We recognise the importance of a secure foundation in mental calculation and recall of number facts before standard written methods are introduced.
Children will be expected to edit and correct work, which is completed using a purple pen. We use verbal feedback (in line with our school feedback policy) to support children with this valuable skill.
Response to maths sessions are used to provide additional intervention support for children who have struggled with the lesson’s learning objective, to ensure that they are ready for the next learning step tomorrow. This allows children to stay with the rest of the class, rather than fall behind.
We use a variety of information to measure the impact of our mathematics curriculum and our teaching:
- Pupil and staff voice
- Lesson observations and learning walks
- Environment checks and work scrutiny
- Statutory end of Key Stage assessments data
- Internal data (from summative assessments)
EYFS
In EYFS, the children talk confidently about their Maths learning and can hold a conversation with their peers or adults about their learning. The children have a clear enjoyment of Maths. This confidence of Maths and love of learning is nurtured and developed as the children progress through the school.
Our delivery of Maths at KS1 and KS2 at The Hundred of Hoo Primary Academy allows children to be confident in lessons and can be seen to use appropriate methods and strategies (such as manipulatives, pictorial and written methods) independently. This is reflected in the children’s maths books where evidence of the Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract approach can be seen. This then feeds into their reasoning tasks which shows when the children have mastered the skills and knowledge taught within lessons.
When considering our long term impact of teaching and learning at The Hundred of Hoo Primary Academy we focus on both end of year targets as well as their end of key stage targets. We strive for our children to reach age related expectations at the end of their current academic year as well as their key stage. This includes the end of KS1 and KS2 statutory assessments as well as the year 4 multiplication check (supported by the use of TT Rockstars). We also think forward to ensuring that our children are well prepared for the secondary maths curriculum.
At the end of EYFS the percentage of children achieving at least the expected standard in number at the end of 2019 was XX%.
At the end of KS1 87% of children achieved at least the expected standard in maths in 2019, with 27% achieving greater depth.