Our Maths Policy

At Shakespeare Primary School we recognise the importance of mathematics throughout each child’s everyday and future life. It enables children to understand relationships and patterns in both number and space in the world around them. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. We intend to give each child the self-confidence and resilience to reach their full potential by ensuring that they have the tools to calculate fluently, reason logically, problem solve and think in abstract ways.

Intent- What are we trying to achieve?

• provide teaching and learning, which is accessible to all and will maximise the development of every child’s ability and academic achievement.

• Build the ability to make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving problems.

• Allow everybody to apply their mathematical knowledge in a variety of situations, whether in or out of school.

• Build confident, independent, resilient learners who see mistakes as the first step in the learning journey.

Implementation- How do we put this into practice?

In order to improve our mastery approach and further improve the quality and consistency of our maths teaching, we have implemented White Rose Maths – a high-quality mastery scheme.

We recognise the value of making a coherent journey through the national curriculum and each year group follow a plan where small, cumulative steps build a solid foundation of deep mathematical understanding. Formative assessment is threaded throughout both each lesson and unit of work; and appropriate revisions to planning are made by the class teacher to ensure all lessons are tailored to best meet the needs of their children. 

It is essential that children have a deep understanding of the most important elements that underpin the mathematics curriculum so that there is consistency and continuity as children move from one year group to the next. Therefore, if necessary, time is spent revisiting key number concepts that have been taught previously.

In order to meet our aims above and the requirements set out in the EYFS framework and the Primary National Curriculum, we will implement the following:

• Teachers reinforce an expectation that all children are capable of achieving high standards in Mathematics.

• To develop secure and deep conceptual understanding, staff plan for the use of concrete resources, varied representations and structures.

• Regular and ongoing formative assessment informs teaching, as well as intervention, to support and enable the success of each child.

• Summative assessments take place at the end of a unit and termly. Planning is adjusted accordingly.

• Children’s attainment and progress is discussed by teachers and SLT and if progress is not made, support is immediate.

• Children’s attainment and progress is discussed with parents/carers during parents’ evenings.  

• Differentiation is achieved by emphasising deep knowledge and through individual support and intervention. It is seen through the concrete resources used, and/or the reliance on the representations and structures within a lesson to help embed a mathematical concept. All children are expected to be exposed to age related expectations and staff allow the time to plug gaps children may have in a particular area of mathematics. Staff understand what age-related expectations looks like for each objective and plan for how their children will get there. In order to meet the needs of all pupils, children working at a greater depth of understanding within an area of mathematics have ‘going deeper’ opportunities planned by staff.

• Success criteria are set out in order to guide children to achieve success.

• Provision will be made for children who are not making the expected level of progress through I.E.Ps and interventions. 

• Teaching that is underpinned by methodical curriculum design and supported by carefully crafted lessons and resources to foster deep conceptual and procedural knowledge.

• Practice and consolidation play a central role. Carefully designed variation within this builds fluency and understanding of underlying mathematical concepts.

• Teachers use precise questioning in class to test conceptual and procedural knowledge and assess children regularly to identify those requiring intervention, so that all children keep up.

• Children’s explanations and their proficiency in articulating mathematical reasoning, with the precise use of mathematical vocabulary, are supported with teachers placing a strong emphasis on the correct use of mathematical language.

Impact- What is the impact of our curriculum?

• Children are happy learners who talk enthusiastically about their learning and eager to further their progress in maths.

• The use of consistent resources and materials have led to increased confidence in Maths.

• Regular assessments have allowed for reactive support to take place quickly. 

• Children’s fluency in number is evident in our proven track record of high success in arithmetic. 

• Teacher assessment of the depth of learning is also increasingly accurate.

• These factors ensure that we are able to achieve high standards, with achievement at the end of KS2 in-line with that of the national average.

Curriculum Design

We recognise the value of making a coherent journey through the national curriculum and each year group follow a plan where small, cumulative steps build a solid foundation of deep mathematical understanding. Click below to view each individual year group’s long-term planning.

Calculation

Children love to count and this is further developed through looking at patterns within the number system and understanding manipulation of numbers through the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The methods of calculation taught at our school can be found below.

Progression

It is vital that mathematical skills and knowledge are developed and built on throughout each child’s journey through school. Our progression document can be found below.

Further support at home…

We have a range of online resources that children can access from home with their own personal logins to further support their knowledge and confidence in maths.

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