INTENT - How we have planned our Maths curriculum:

Mathematics is vital for the life opportunities of our children.

We believe that all our children can succeed at maths and want all of our children to enjoy mathematics and have a positive attitude towards it. We foster a positive ‘can do’ attitude and we promote the fact that ‘We can all do maths!’

We aim to provide a high-quality mathematics education, by providing pupils with a deep understanding of the subject through a concrete, pictorial and abstract approach.

We believe there is no ceiling to learning and teach for secure and deep understanding of mathematical concepts through manageable steps. We use mistakes and misconceptions as an essential part of learning and provide challenge through a broad range of activities and problems.

 Our aim is for all children to :

• have a sense of enjoyment and curiosity in mathematical learning.

•become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics so that they develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately

•be able to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of problems with increasing sophistication, including in unfamiliar contexts and real-life scenarios

•reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry and develop and present a justification, argument or proof using mathematical language

•Have an appreciation of number and number operations, which enables mental calculations and written procedures to be performed efficiently, fluently and accurately to be successful in mathematics.

IMPLEMENTATION - How we teach our Maths curriculum:

• We teach the National Curriculum through Herts for Learning’s ESSENTIAL Maths scheme. ESSENTIAL maths provide the long term overview of the teaching sequence and day to day short term plans. Teachers annotate against these plans to ensure that the learning opportunities are relevant to the needs of their whole class/individuals.

•Mixed age, episodic, spiral planning is embedded across key stages, enabling children to access and secure age related learning, in all mixed year group classes.

•Planning delivering a mastery approach/top down approach across the key strands, supporting children to see links across their learning. This ensures a consistent, whole school approach to delivery and learning, children are able to transition from class to class, age groups smoothly, without learning being lost.

•Most sessions begin with teacher modelling, guided work, paired work before working independently.

• We use a concrete, pictorial, abstract approach to teach new concepts; the children are provided with multiple representations of new concepts to ensure they have a deep and secure understanding of the new learning.  •Developing reasoning skills, particularly through the use of talk frames and vocabulary prompts is a key aspect of the children’s learning.

•Daily fluency sessions (10 minutes, teacher led) and daily ‘fluent in 5’ sessions take place from Yr.1 to Yr. 6 outside of the daily maths session. This enables children to practice retrieving key information from their long -term memory to use in their working memory and to make links between learning and to secure fluency.

•Classrooms are well resourced, and manipulatives used daily to help children deepen their understanding, make links, support or strengthen their learning.

•Half-termly newsletters are sent home to ensure that parents/carers understand the  learning opportunities that their children have within Maths, giving them a chance to discuss further at home.