Maths

Maths at Stretham Community Primary School

~~~~Aim~~~~

At Stretham Primary, we believe that it is important for our children to think like mathematicians and see it’s value in everyday life. Maths is a universal language which will help children to confidently navigate their way through many everyday tasks.

In order to do this, children need to be: secure with mathematical vocabulary, make connections in their learning, transfer mathematical skills across all subjects of the curriculum and apply these skills to real-life contexts. Our pupils have opportunities to ask questions and reason in order to solve problems and they know the value of learning from their mistakes.

~~~~Intent~~~~

Our intent matches the clear expectations of the National Curriculum and through our teaching, we aim to ensure our pupils:

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

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

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

~~~~Teaching Approach~~~~

Pupils at Stretham Primary are taught in year groups and primarily use White Rose materials to support the teaching and learning of Maths in school.

Lessons begin with a short activity which allows for pupils to rehearse, recall or develop their mathematical fluency. From the beginning of the lesson, we work to develop oracy among our pupils. Key vocabulary is shared with pupils during the lesson and modelled throughout. Children are encouraged to use sentence stems to develop their mathematical understanding and questioning is carefully considered to ensure the children can explain their thinking. Reasoning tasks and questioning are carefully considered throughout the lesson to allow for deeper thinking and explanation.

An input for the lesson begins with a retrieval practice activity where children review their previous learning from the day/ week before to build upon and make connections during the current lesson. We have adopted the mastery approach to structure our lessons. There are certain principles and key features which characterise this approach:

Primarily, we teach in small steps by presenting the children with appropriate concrete, pictorial and abstract representations to support their learning. As the children become secure with a concept, they rely less on concrete and pictorial representations and can solve abstract reasoning and further problems. Fluency is vitally important as the children develop their mathematical understanding and we work to ensure that the children can recall number bonds, multiplication and division facts to support understanding of all areas in the maths curriculum.