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Our Curriculum

“I am only passionately curious.”

by Albert Einstein

Intent

Mathematics is a critical life skill which significantly affects children’s life chances and the possibilities that are available to them. We believe that all pupils can achieve in mathematics and we have high expectations for every child. 

Our focus is, first and foremost, on ensuring that children develop fluency in the fundamentals of maths with an ability to recall age appropriate number facts quickly and accurately. This will support them to become confident, enthusiastic mathematicians who are eager to explore the wonderful world of Maths.

We believe that children should be supported to develop a deep conceptual understanding of Mathematics and do this through using a wide range of visual models and practical resources to support our teaching and the children’s learning.

We aim to ensure that children can reason mathematically, explaining their ideas confidently, fluently and clearly using age-appropriate mathematical vocabulary.

We want to inspire a positive, ‘can do’ approach in our pupils and to develop enthusiastic, resilient mathematicians who demonstrate mathematical curiosity, initiative and an eagerness to solve problems, take risks and accept challenges. We want our children to enjoy what they are doing!

Finally, we intend to broaden children’s knowledge and understanding of how mathematics is used in everyday life and the wider world and to understand the possibilities that maths can open up for them.

Curriculum Organisation

We have developed our own long-term plans which ensure that pupils have enough time to explore topics in depth and those topics that we consider to be critical (e.g. calculation, place value, fractions) are revisited over the course of the academic year, enabling pupils to recap and deepen their understanding in these areas. Units have been organised to maximise the natural links between topics: they feed naturally into each other, allowing children to build on and apply the mathematical skills they have learnt previously into their current unit of study.

Teachers plan children’s learning journey through each unit carefully, taking into consideration:

• the children’s prior learning and their current starting points;
• small steps that children need to master to develop a thorough grasp of the overall concept being taught;
• key models and images which may be useful to support children’s understanding;
• key misconceptions which may need unpicking;
• opportunities for varied fluency, ensuring that children have a secure understanding of the overall concept being taught by presenting the maths in different ways;
• opportunities to deepen learning through a variety of problem solving and reasoning activities.

Procedural Fluency

Each year group dedicates at least the first five minutes of every lesson to either teaching or practising key number facts which are centred around the children’s age appropriate expectations. Additional to this, in EYFS and Key Stage 1, children take part in the Mastering Number Programme, in lower Key Stage 2, children’s morning tasks develop times table recall and in Upper Key Stage 2 morning tasks are dedicated to practising written calculation methods.

Times tables are taught over four week blocks with the children quizzed each Friday to assess the progress they are making. At the end of each week, children identify three target facts that they need to learn and these are practised in class and at home (see Times Tables Policy).  This approach ensures that children know which times tables facts they have learnt and which they need to learn next.  Additionally, every child has a Times Tables Rockstars (KS2) and Numbots (KS1) account and they are given time each week in school to practise.

Every Friday is ‘Flashback Friday’. During these sessions, children take part in a carousel of activities which allow them to revisit a range of previously taught topics. This ensures that overlearning can take place, crucial skills are practised and learning in these areas is strengthened. Flashback Friday sessions are designed to be worksheet free, arithmetic or fluency based and most activities will be accessed by children independently. Teachers will choose one or two tasks that are ‘guided’: these stations provide an opportunity to re-teach and secure understanding in an area of learning that children have not yet mastered.

Our written calculation policy has been designed to ensure clear progression from EYFS to Year 6 and age appropriate procedures for the four operations.

Features of Maths Lessons at Christ Church & St Peter's:

Differentiation

The vast majority of the class will work on the same learning objective. Where children are significantly below ARE and are unable to access the curriculum, children may work on more appropriate objectives, tailored to their learning needs. These children will be assessed separately using PIVATS.

In accordance with our Teaching & Learning policy, each Maths lesson will be differentiated for depth. Some children will need learning more heavily scaffolded, some children will be ready to learn more independently whilst some children will be ready to apply the learning more quickly. ALL children will have access to reasoning and problem solving activities. However, it is likely that those working at Greater Depth will have more examples of this type of learning because they will reach a point where they are ready to apply their learning more quickly.

Exploration, Discussion & Justification

Teachers use high-quality questioning to explore children’s understanding and develop it further as well as making use of common misconceptions to further deepen understanding of key concepts. Children are able to explain ‘how they know’ answers are correct or incorrect and are keen to spot patterns and make generalisations. Teachers explicitly teach age appropriate mathematical vocabulary and support children to give effective oral and written explanations through the use of sentence stems.

Concrete - Pictorial - Abstract

When brand new learning is introduced, we use concrete resources (particularly numicon, dienes, counters and cubes) to develop secure conceptual understanding, gradually moving to pictoral then abstract representations. This approach can be seen throughout school, from EYFS to Year 6 and is also represented in our written calculation policy.  When teaching times tables, we always use arrays to support children to understand the relationship between multiplication and division.

Assessment

All children are assessed termly using the Chris Quigley Essentials curriculum, giving them a judgement of basic, advancing or deep against each strand of learning. Children are also assessed termly (half termly for lower key stage 2) against the non-negotiable expectations for their year group. Children’s progressed is tracked and discussed at Pupil Progress meetings and those not making expected progress are given support to catch up. Children causing particular concern may be assessed using the Sandwell Early Numeracy Assessment, providing targeted areas for intervention and support. Interventions are designed according to need but may include elements of: Precision Teach, Number Stars, Pre-teach, Numbers and Patterns or small group additional teaching input.

Early Years Foundation Stage

Work undertaken in the Early Years Foundation Stage is guided by the requirements and recommendations set out in the Early Years document. All children are given ample opportunity to develop their understanding of mathematics through both adult led work & enhanced provision and through play based activities within continuous provision. Lessons in the early years follow a similar approach to that used in the rest of the school and use concrete and pictorial representations to develop a secure understanding of key concepts. Children are encouraged to use, enjoy, explore, practise and talk confidently about mathematics using reasoning to explain their ideas. The children are exposed to rich problems and use practical resources such as Numicon, tens frames and other concrete materials to master key concepts.