Maths Lead: Ben Hamblin

What is maths?

Mathematics, a universal language that enables understanding of the world, is an integral part of our curriculum at Trent Young’s CE School. Beyond the study of numbers, shapes and patterns, it also provides important tools for work in fields such as engineering, physics, finance, medicine and business. It nurtures the development of a logical and methodical mindset, as well helping to develop focus and the ability to solve all manner of problems.

Our Curriculum Intent

The intention of the maths curriculum at Trent Young’s is that all children are taught to become competent mathematicians; we strive to embed the skills and processes necessary to enable children to use and apply their maths learning in a variety of contexts. We aim to develop children’s enjoyment of maths and provide opportunities for children to build a deep, sustainable, conceptual understanding of maths whilst also applying their knowledge to everyday problems and challenges. Children will develop a strong knowledge of the key facts that underpin mathematics learning as well as the ability to use these within a problem solving context.

Our approach to the teaching of mathematics develops children's ability to work both independently and collaboratively as part of a team. Through mathematical talk, children will develop the ability to articulate and discuss their thinking. By the end of Key Stage Two, children will leave our school as lovers of mathematics and be prepared for the next step in their mathematical education. 

Our Curriculum Implementation

We use resources from White Rose Maths as a vehicle to structure the declarative (I know that), procedural (I know how) and conditional (I know when) knowledge that underpins our maths teaching. We feel that this gives teachers enough guidance to ensure a mastery approach is followed whilst still giving teachers enough autonomy to meet the needs of their class. Across all year groups, progression across and within year groups are mapped through our progression of skills document with objectives mapped out into each half-termly planning grids to ensure that appropriate coverage is achieved over the academic year. These are mapped using the NCETM progression grids and Ready to Progress documents as a guide.

Maths is taught daily as a dedicated lesson and children are taught in their single year groups within a mixed-age classroom through our splintered input system to allow each year group in a class to learn the content relevant to their year group. Workbooks, planning and small steps from White Rose Maths are used to support teaching and learning in maths across the school. Independent practice activities are often based around activities in the White Rose Maths workbooks—this allows teachers to spend longer focusing on what the children will be thinking about, not what they’ll be doing. Within a year group, children are all taught at the same pace with a focus on challenging children through the depth of their learning whilst meeting the needs of all children. Recap sheets are completed on a daily basis to support children’s recall of key declarative knowledge that will often underpins other areas of learning. This also has the benefit of continually revisiting and consolidating key learning. Lessons will follow a structure of ’Let’s Learn’ and guided practice before engaging with the task for the lesson, starting with a White Rose workbook activity before developing further problem solving and reasoning skills through additional, closely-related activities in the form of digging deeper. Structured reflection tasks support children in developing their written reasoning and works closely with open-ended questioning in supporting children’s acquisition of a concept.

Manipulatives and concrete resources are used across the school to support the children’s developing understanding of new concepts. These are used with the knowledge that they will, at some point, be unnecessary as the child’s conceptual understanding develops to a point where they no longer require concrete resources. Tutoring and intervention is used to ensure that all children keep up with the expected learning and to support them through pre-teaching.  

Our Curriculum Impact

It is understood that maths learning consists of many interrelated dimensions, meanings that a child’s understanding in one area often underpins learning in another area.

The evaluation of learning takes place in a number of ways:

• In every lesson, formative strategies such as asking challenging, in-depth questions; feedback through discussion and  self-assessment are used to allow a teacher to monitor children’s learning and make changes to the approach taken.
• Marking and feedback is timely and supports the children in knowing the next steps in their learning. We use live marking effectively in maths to ensure that any misconceptions are addressed within the lesson and to extend the children’s learning.
• Low stakes quizzes are often undertaken by the children to both aid recall but also to identify areas that may need more practice.
• Summative assessments are used to provide a picture of whether children are ready for the next stage of their learning. This then allows specific intervention and support to be put in place to support those at risk of falling behind. These happen termly across Year 1-6 and end of key stage statutory assessments are also undertaken by Year 2 and 6 children.

Curriculum Drivers:

More in-depth documentation is available on request for our maths curriculum.