Maths

Mathematics

At Castle Primary School, we share the belief that mathematics is a creative and highly inter-connected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. A high-quality mathematics education therefore provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject. 

As a cornerstone of our primary curriculum, we aim to support all children to become confident and creative mathematicians. Our teaching approaches are designed to support children to notice the key links and the interconnectivity of this vast subject area. We follow the EYFS Framework in nursery and reception and teach the National Curriculum in Years 1 to 6. To deliver the National Curriculum, and support us in our teaching for mastery journey, we use the White Rose Maths Scheme of Learning. The reason we have adopted this scheme is because of the way in which the National Curriculum objectives have been broken down into small and manageable steps. 

To learn mathematics effectively, some things have to be learned before others, e.g. place value needs to be understood before working with addition and subtraction; addition needs to be learnt before looking at multiplication (as a model of repeated addition). You will see this emphasis on number skills first, carefully ordered, throughout the schemes. For some other topics, the order isn’t as crucial, e.g. Shapes and Statistics need to come after number, but don’t depend on each other. These have been mixed so pupils have as wide a variety of mathematical experiences as possible in each term and year.

Curriculum Intent

The aim of our mathematics curriculum is to build long-lasting learning through the progressive acquisition of knowledge and skills. We want our pupils to become confident, competent and independent mathematicians, who are able to build a deep conceptual understanding of maths and its interrelated connectiveness, so they can apply their learning in different situations. We aim to develop children’s ability to articulate, discuss and explain their thinking using appropriate mathematical vocabulary.

Our maths curriculum is achievable for all. Pupils are taught through whole-class interactive teaching, where the focus is on all pupils working together on the same lesson content at the same time. This ensures that all children can master concepts before moving to the next part of the curriculum sequence, allowing no pupil to be left behind. If a pupil fails to grasp a concept or procedure, this is identified quickly and early intervention ensures the pupil is ready to move forward with the whole class in the next lesson. Although the teaching of the concepts is the same for all, the outcomes in terms of application may be different.

In our mathematics teaching, we aim to instil the mindset that everyone can do maths and that maths is for everyone. Mistake-friendly classrooms help children recognise the power mistakes have on our learning. Mistakes also support our pupils in developing resilience and inquisitiveness within the maths curriculum.

Curriculum Implementation

We teach our maths curriculum through the use of White Rose Maths schemes of learning. White Rose Maths is a whole-class mastery programme that supports all pupils to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, to be able to reason and to solve problems. The scheme embraces these National Curriculum aims, and provides guidance to help pupils to become:

Visualisers – the CPA approach is used to help pupils understand mathematics and to make connections between different representations.

Describers – there is a great emphasis on mathematical language and questioning so pupils can discuss the mathematics they are doing, and so support them to take ideas further.

Experimenters – as well as being fluent mathematicians, we want pupils to love and learn more about mathematics.

Lesson sequence:
At Castle Primary, we refer to Roshenshine's Ten Principles of Instruction and refer to the EEF's 5-a-day principles to support us in designing individual lessons. In a typical maths lesson, you will see:

• Flashback 4: Each lesson begins with four quick questions, which support fluency in the key number facts, and allows children to recap prior learning. This constant and daily practice reinforces one of Rosenshine’s strands of reviewing material: crucial for storing knowledge in long-term memory.
• Explicit instruction: Every lesson will take children through worked examples and guided practice, before the children apply what they have learnt independently. If a child is struggling, teachers use the assessment for learning, to support these pupils during the lesson.  
• Modelling cognitive and metacognitive strategies: Teachers model their own thinking to support pupils in developing their own metacognitive and cognitive strategies.
• Independent Practice: Children work independently, answering questions in their maths books. Sometimes, children may need more varied fluency practice before tackling the more in-depth questions or a challenge to go deeper: these are created by the teacher, using NCETM and WRM resources. 

Curriculum Impact

When our pupils leave each Key Stage, learners will have the Mathematical knowledge, skills and vocabulary necessary to progress to the next stage of their learning.

As a result of high-quality teaching, learning makes sustained progress in mathematics and develops the competence to reason and problem solve confidently and efficiently.