Maths
Intent
Why do we teach this? Why do we teach it in the way we do?
Mathematics is an essential creative discipline that helps us to understand the world. We wish for all children to experience the beauty, power and enjoyment of mathematics and develop a sense of curiosity about the subject with a clear understandingAt Woodlands Primary School we provide a broad and rich curriculum which promotes a love of learning, personal growth and development through a balance of skills and knowledge, ensuring coverage of the National Curriculum objectives for mathematics.
At Woodlands, building upon our core tenets of respect, resilience, empathy, self-awareness, passion for learning (botherdness), excellence, communication and teamwork, we foster positive and resilient attitudes and promote the fact that everyone can do maths. We believe all children can achieve in mathematics, and teach for secure and deep understanding of mathematical concepts through small, meaningful steps. At our school, pupils will spend time becoming mastering content, applying new knowledge in different ways, including cross-curricular application.
We aim for all pupils to:
- 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 to real-life scenarios
- reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry and developing an argument, justification, or proof using correct, stage-appropriate mathematical vocabulary
Implementation
What do we teach? What does this look like?
At Woodlands, we teach Maths across the school - from EYFS to Y6 - by following small steps of progression as guided by The White Rose scheme whilst covering the National Curriulum objectives. Fluency, Reasoning and Problem Solving are at the heart of the approach. The White Rose scheme also uses the Concrete Pictorial Abstract (CPA) approach​ to support children's learning and progression. A concrete approach refers to the physical resources that children can manipulate to support their learning, examples include clocks, place value counters and bead strings. A pictorial approach refers to the visual models that can be used to support the understanding of methods and concepts. Finally, the abstract approach is the written method that the progression of skills and knowledge works towards; an example of this is the formal written method for addition. By embedding this approach, we are allowing pupils to spend enough time to fully explore a topic, reinforcing it with practise, before moving onto the next one. All ideas are built on previous knowledge and pupils have ample opportunity to develop relationships between topics.
This academic year (2021-2022), Woodlands are embedding the use of the DfE's ready-to-progress criteria to inform planning and adapt the order of mathematical units. Each class teacher has ownership of their yearly mathematical objectives, and for this reason timings may not always follow the long term plan (yearly overview) set by White Rose.
