Maths

INTENT

At The Duchy School, we believe that Maths is essential to everyday life, critical to Science, Technology and Engineering and necessary for financial Literacy and most forms of employment. The intent of our Maths curriculum is that all children are challenged to excel and that it provide: a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically and to solve problems, the ability to think logically and to work systematically and accurately and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject. Pupils develop their use of mathematical vocabulary and use this to explain their thinking and reasoning and are expected to ask questions to further their own and others learning experiences, making rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems.

We want to ensure that our pupils achieve a deep understanding of mathematics without any pre-conceived ideas being placed on a child’s ability. Fundamental to our philosophy about mathematics is the belief that all children can achieve in Maths. Pupils will leave The Duchy School with the ambition for life-long learning within the discipline as well as the skills to access further mathematical concepts when they move on to secondary school and beyond.  

At The Duchy School, we regard a mathematician as someone who: 

• Is curious in all aspects of life 
• Enjoys the state of not yet knowing the resolution 
• Asks their own questions 
• Can spot patterns 
• Can conjecture 
• Can generalise 
• Can reflect and notice 
• Tries to disprove ideas 
• Argues with their own thinking 

IMPLEMENTATION

At The Duchy School, we use White Rose schemes of learning to support our planning. These schemes are adapted by teachers to suit the needs of both individual children, groups and class cohorts.

• Elicitation tasks are used to inform planning and differentiation in each Maths topic
• End of unit tasks are used to measure progress and inform future planning, interventions and topics that may need revisiting.
• All teachers follow the school’s calculation policy to ensure consistency in methods of calculation taught.
• New mathematical concepts are introduced using the connective model so that children can make links between vocabulary, symbols, a context and a mathematically structured image; enabling all children to experience hands-on learning when discovering new mathematical topics, and allowing them to have clear models and images to aid their understanding.
• This connective model is displayed on the class working wall and supported by examples, work and questions written by both the teacher and be children. The working wall is used to support teaching in all lessons.
• All lessons include clear modelling of concepts taught.
• Children are explicitly taught the relevant vocabulary for Mathematics and this is clearly displayed on the working wall and referenced during teaching.
• Children’s targets in Maths are linked to counting objectives within the National Curriculum and are taught 3x per week.
• Children in Years 2 – 6 access TT Rockstars to improve their fluency in times tables
• Children are taught through targeted differentiated small group and mixed ability whole class lessons
• Revise and Review consolidation lessons are used to revisit previous learning from Whiterose to ensure Maths skills are embedded.
• Homework is set every three weeks to develop and review children’s learning in Maths
• Arithmetic and basic counting skills are practised daily to ensure key mathematical concepts are embedded and children can recall this information to see the links between topics in Maths. 
• A range of reasoning resources are used to challenge all children and give them the opportunity to reason with their understanding.
• All children will have access to lessons that use a variety of practical resources to support learning and different representations of mathematical concepts.
• All children in KS2 complete a weekly arithmetic test which is marked with to ensure regular practice and fluency in key skills.

Assessment:

• Throughout each lesson, formative assessment takes place and feedback is given to the children through marking and next step tasks to ensure they are meeting the specific learning objective.
• Teacher’s use ongoing formative assessment to influence their planning and ensure they are providing a mathematics curriculum that will allow each child to progress.
• Results from both formative assessment and summative assessment is used to determine children’s progress and attainment.
• Each term children from Year 2 and above complete a summative assessment to help them to develop their testing approach and demonstrate their understanding of the topics covered.
• Children in Year 6 complete regular practice SATs assessments.

All teaching of Mathematics is in line with the National Curriculum Mathematics programme of study.

IMPACT

As a result of our curriculum design you will see children who are engaged and appropriately challenged and are confident to talk about Maths and their learning and the links between Mathematical topics. Elicitation and end of unit outcomes show good or better progress for all learners. There will be no significant gaps in the progress of different groups of pupils (e.g. disadvantaged vs non disadvantaged)

Pupils know how and why maths is used in the outside world and in the workplace. They know about different ways that maths can be used to support their future potential.  Pupils use acquired vocabulary in maths lessons to enable them to confidently talk about their learning and extend their thinking. They have the skills to use methods independently and show resilience when tackling problems.

As a result of learning that is tracked and monitored all children make good progress. This is measured by KS1 SATs and teacher assessment, KS2 SATs and ongoing teacher assessment in all year groups. The % of pupils working at ARE within each year group will be at least in line with national averages. The % of pupils working at Greater Depth within each year group will be at least in line with national averages.

At The Duchy School we use the 2014 National Curriculum as a basis for learning in Maths lessons, using the White Rose scheme to ensure that children’s development is well-structured as they move through the school. Teachers are confident of the strategies children have acquired in previous year groups, thus eliminating any confusion of different teachers teaching different methods.  We also know that many parents and carers often wish to support their children at home with their learning, but can worry about teaching the wrong way of doing things.  By using the following link we hope that you are able to gain a better insight into the methods that we teach in school and at which stage of the children’s development:

• Maths Calculation Policy  – details of how we teach the four maths operations in school

Please do talk to your child’s teacher if you have any questions about the above – we would be delighted to help out.