Mathematics

Mathematics

Our Curriculum Intent- Maths

At our school Maths encourages children to become confident and resilient mathematicians, who are able to use mathematical vocabulary, reasoning skills and knowledge in a variety of contexts. The Maths curriculum is rooted in practical experiences to ensure a solid sense of number, fostering a lifelong love of Maths that will prepare children for life beyond our school.

At Whitefield Infant School and Nursery, we are a Maths Mastery school. We inspire in our mathematicians a sense of curiosity and fascination about the number, patterns, systems and calculations, which will remain with them for the rest of their lives. We teach Mathematics through the Mastery approach to ensure an ambitious curriculum with the expectation that all children will achieve in Mathematics. Through adaptive teaching we are able to tailor learning in maths to meet the needs of all our children. With our ‘challenge for all’ approach every learner meets the learning intentions. We are all mathematicians!

Our Maths Mastery Aims:

Mathematics teaching for mastery at Whitefield believes everyone can learn and enjoy mathematics.
Learning behaviours are developed in ways that enable our children to focus and engage fully as learners who reason and seek to make connections.
Our curriculum design ensures a coherent and detailed sequence of essential content to support sustained progression over time.
All children receive the support they need to access our curriculum - challenge for all through ‘next step’ questions and challenges.
Assessment for Learning is crucial - building on prior knowledge, using pre teaching and teachers adapting as the children learn.
Learning Checks are used to guide the learning taking place
Intervention is identified quickly and delivered as soon as possible, preferably before the start of the next lesson.
Our outdoor classrooms are used to enhance our mathematical journey - providing stimulating ways to investigate maths in the real world.

At Whitefield we use RED ROSE MATHS as our framework for teaching maths in Years 1 and 2. In our three Reception classes we are piloting the new Red Rose Mastery Scheme for Reception.

Please see the gallery below for photographs of our Reception Red Rose learning journey so far.

Through Red Rose Maths:

Children are taught through whole-class interactive teaching, enabling all children the opportunity to master the concepts necessary for the next part of the curriculum sequence.
In a typical lesson, the teacher leads back and forth interaction, including questioning, short tasks, explanation, demonstration, and discussion, enabling children to think, reason and apply their knowledge to solve problems.
Use of precise mathematical language enables children to communicate their reasoning and thinking effectively.
If a child is not understanding a concept or procedure, this is identified quickly, and any misconceptions are addressed systematically to close gaps in learning.
Significant time is spent developing deep understanding of the key ideas that are needed to underpin future learning.
Key number facts are learnt to automaticity, and other key mathematical facts are learned deeply and practised regularly, to avoid cognitive overload in working memory and enable pupils to focus on new learning.

Mathematics in the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum comes under two strands, each of which has an Early Learning Goal attached:-

Number

Early Learning Goal - Have a deep understanding of number to 10, including the composition of each number;

- Subitise (recognise quantities without counting) up to 5;

- Automatically recall (without reference to rhymes, counting or other aids) number bonds up to 5 (including subtraction facts) and some number bonds to 10, including double facts.

Numerical Patterns
Early Learning Goal - Verbally count beyond 20, recognising the pattern of the counting system;

- Compare quantities up to 10 in different contexts, recognising when one quantity is greater than, less than or the same as the other quantity;

- Explore and represent patterns within numbers up to 10, including evens and odds, double facts and how quantities can be distributed equally.

The Early Learning Goals define the level of development children are expected to attain by the end of the Reception year.

As with all other Areas of Learning, the teaching and learning of mathematics in our Nursery and Reception classes takes place both indoors and outdoors through a wide range of practical and "hands on" activities.

All EYFS staff use their knowledge and expertise to plan for a high quality learning environment which provides children with lots of opportunities to explore different aspects of number and shape, space and measures and learn new concepts. The children have a wide range of structured play resources available to them throughout the year - this is known as "continuous provision". The adults model the use of these resources and the appropriate mathematical language as they support the children in their play.

For example, children learn about capacity through their sand, mud and water play indoors and outdoors. They use containers of different shapes and sizes to measure and compare.

Children develop their knowledge and understanding of shapes and their properties through their experiences of activities such as junk modelling and block play.

Blockplay also offers children the opportunity to develop their knowledge and understanding of some key concepts relating to number such as "Conservation of Number" which means knowing that when a group of objects are moved around the total remains the same. This is a prerequisite skill to calculation.

In addition to the opportunities for child initiated play indoors and outdoors, staff plan adult led activities for groups of children and individuals based on their observations of what children know and can do. They plan activities to address any misconceptions that have arisen and to introduce new concepts.

Every day we deliver a Maths curriculum that shows:

representation and structure - effective pedagogies for modelling, concrete-pictorial-abstract approaches, effective use of manipulatives and transition between them.
coherence - curriculum design, progression of objectives, sequencing learning, small steps, contextualising learning between different areas of mathematics.
mathematical thinking - effective questioning, identifying patterns and relationships, deep understanding through reasoning and problem solving, supporting children to achieve. At Whitefield we have a ‘talk for learning’ ethos which where discussion is a powerful and essential element of each lesson. Learners have frequent opportunities to talk to their partners so that they may explain/clarify their thinking throughout the lesson, as well as opportunities for discussion with the teacher which helps develop their reasoning skills and deeper understanding.
variation - progression through representations using conceptual variation, progression through questioning using procedural variation.
Fluency - efficiency, accuracy, flexibility, developing unconscious competence.
SEND provision - where appropriate, we involve learners with SEND as much as possible in the whole class journey. However, we recognise that this is not always appropriate and, where they require a different or divergent journey and resources, these are fully planned and provided for.

A Whitefield mathematician...

Flourishes during their time at Whitefield and gains a passion and understanding of the role maths plays in everyday life. A Whitefield mathematician is confident in recalling prior learning and how this has supported them in developing further knowledge. They use mathematical vocabulary with confidence and demonstrate taught skills with an understanding of when they might use these in later life. The impact of our mathematics curriculum is that children understand the relevance and importance of what they are learning in relation to real world concepts. Children know that maths is a vital life skill that they will rely on in many areas of their daily life.

Children have a positive view of maths due to learning in an environment where maths is promoted as being an exciting and enjoyable subject in which they can investigate and ask questions; they know that it is reasonable to make mistakes because this can strengthen their learning through the journey to finding an answer. Children are confident to ‘have a go’ and choose the equipment they need to help them to learn along with the strategies they think are best suited to each problem.

Our maths books show work of a high standard of which children clearly take pride; the components of the teaching sequences demonstrate good coverage of fluency, reasoning and problem solving. Our feedback and interventions support children to strive to be the best mathematicians they can be. Our standards across school are high, we moderate our books both internally and externally to ensure that children continue to make excellent progress from their individual starting points.

Nursery

Reception

Year 1

Year 2

At Whitefield we use both summative and formative assessment to assess the impact of our mathematics curriculum. The below approaches to assessments are examples of what teachers and leaders use to determine the progress and attainment of Whitefield Mathematicians

Formal, informal and verbal feedback - live marking
Red Rose end of unit learning checks.
Moderation of work - internal and external
Tracking against National curriculum objectives and the EYFS Development Matters and Early Learning Goals.
Pupil Voice