Mathematics
At Capenhurst CE Primary, we believe that everyone can achieve and succeed in mathematics. Our inclusive curriculum ensures that every child can reach their full potential. Our aim is for children to leave as confident, skilled and resilient mathematicians; who understand that mathematics is a fundamental part of everyday life and the world we live in.
We aim to provide children with a broad and balanced maths curriculum, which offers opportunities for the practice and application of both arithmetic and reasoning skills to ensure children make good progress and become confident mathematicians.
At Capenhurst CE Primary School, children should:
- be fluent in mental calculation skills related to their year group
- have the ability to apply fluent mental and arithmetic skills to reasoning and problem-solving tasks
- feel confident in their own mathematical ability
- develop independence
- have the ability to tackle problems logically
- link mathematical concepts together to support their understanding
- have a suitable technical vocabulary to articulate their responses
Capenhurst follows the National Curriculum programs of study for the teaching of mathematics and aims to excel in its three core areas:
- Fluency
- Reasoning
- Problem solving
Each year group are taught to be fluent in the fundamental workings of the number system as this feeds into all number based work and wider problem solving activities.
Implementation
As a school, we follow the White Rose Maths Scheme of Learning (see Long Term Overview). In addition to the White Rose scheme, teachers use resources from NCETM, Classroom Secrets, Third Space Learning, Twinkl etc. in order to enhance the children’s teaching and learning.
The teachers will follow the following sequence when introducing a new concept:
- Concrete – children should have the opportunity to use concrete objects and manipulatives to help them to understand what they are doing
- Pictorial – children should add pictorial representations alongside their concrete work. These can then be used to help reason and problem solve.
- Abstract – moving from the concrete and pictorial to the abstract and being able to solve problems in a more abstract way.
Mathematical talk – using questions to introduce a concept to the children – will be used at the start of each small step of learning. There will then follow a series of tasks and activities through direct teaching, guided teaching or independent working to allow children opportunities to explore the concept and demonstrate their understanding. Children will have access to apparatus to support their learning as required. Teachers will use resources from the websites and published schemes as noted above. The tasks will move from varied fluency to reasoning and problem solving
Teaching resources available for use in all classrooms range from simple counters, an array of sorting materials, Numicon, Dienes and access to e-learning on iPads and Chromebooks.
Impact
Impact on learning within the lesson is assessed using focused questioning and observations with feedback provided at the point of teaching. At the end of each lesson, books are collected, reviewed and teachers compete a mark book with comments and notes for the following lesson which will start with whole-class feedback on a common misconception.
Prior learning assessments are undertaken before teaching a unit of work, using White Rose assessments in order to inform teachers’ planning. Following each unit of work, the children will also complete a post-learning test (the same White Rose assessmnet used for prior learning) in order for teachers to track their progress against specific objectives taken from the National Curriculum as well as identify objectives which need revisiting.
More formal assessments are undertaken across the school every term using PUMA tests. These give individual maths ages, standardised scores and a PUMA scale which can then track in-year progress.
Monitoring
The maths subject leader will monitor the teaching and learning of maths through termly subject scrutinies, staff meetings to address common areas and introduce new routines and practices and lesson visits. Once trained, the subject leader will undertake a ‘deep dive’ once per academic year. The outcomes of all monitoring activities will be shared with the staff and school leaders.
