Intent (Our curriculum approach and desired outcomes for the children)

We recognise the significant role that mathematics plays in our lives today, and its role in the wider world. As such, we aim to give our pupils secure foundations to prepare them for their life beyond Binbrook Church of England Primary School and also an enjoyment of mathematics that supports them in becoming life-long learners. We want to enable them to use their mathematical skills and knowledge confidently in their lives, in a range of different contexts.

Pupils are required to explore Maths in depth, using mathematical vocabulary to reason and explain their workings. A wide range of mathematical resources and manipulatives are used and pupils are taught to show their workings in a concrete fashion, representing their understanding. They are taught to explain their choice of methods and develop their mathematical reasoning skills. We encourage resilience and acceptance that struggle is often a necessary step in learning. This is coupled with the gradual release approach which is evident in all quality first teaching at Binbrook Primary.

When teaching mathematics at Binbrook Church of England Primary School, we provide a curriculum which caters for the needs of all individuals. We aim to ensure all pupils develop:

• fluency
• reasoning
• problem solving

We incorporate sustained levels of challenge through varied and high quality activities and investigations, which widen their experience and application of mathematical knowledge and skill, and ensure that through collaboration and partnership, they develop skills wider than those that are mathematical. 

Our progression is demonstrated in Carmel Archimedes long-term planning: with reference White Rose and vocabulary progression in line with the National Curriculum. We use a blocked approach to long term planning to ensure that all objectives are covered throughout the year. To support mixed age-group classes, we base our medium term planning on that provided by the Carmel Archimedes maths hub https://carmelarchimedesmathshub.org.uk/resources/mixed-age which includes links to White Rose Hubs, NCETM and NRICH. This helps children build on their prior learning systematically, making connections across a range of concepts taught, but with regular opportunities to revisit and retrieve prior learning, and make links to new ideas. The Curriculum leader ensures the quality and consistency of medium term planning by writing these alongside class teachers. This way we make sure that sequences of lessons follow the school’s quality first teaching approach. For maths. This involves the concrete to abstract pedagogy along-side the ‘Pearson & Gallagher’ gradual release model that is apparent in other curriculum areas as well.  Teachers then have the creativity of short term planning supported by the structure of well set out medium term plans. This enables staff to be more flexible to adapt and meet the needs of a range of learners in their class.

Implementation (What you will see in classrooms)

We implement our approach through high quality teaching which delivers appropriately challenging work for all individuals. We continuously monitor pupils’ progress in order to identify and close gaps in learning as quickly and efficiently as possible. We strive to better our children and frequently share ideas and activities which have been particularly effective. An awareness of Maths in real-life contexts which link to other areas of learning is promoted through a clearly sequenced approach to problem-solving. Lesson expectations are as follows:

• Element of retrieval practice to recap previous learning at the start of the lesson. This may be linked to skills necessary for the main activity
• Teachers use careful questions to draw out children’s discussions and their reasoning.
• The class teacher models/leads children through strategies, knowledge and/ or skills for fluency, calculation and/ or problem solving.
• All chn to have the opportunity to access manipulatives if necessary
• Independent work provides the means for all children to develop their fluency further, before progressing to more complex related problems when ready.
• Ensure extension activities are available for early finishers to enable stretch and challenge
• Mini white board used to ensure all chn response for ongoing AFL throughout the lesson
• Also ensure opportunities for self-assessment throughout the lesson such as traffic light and thumbs up/ down middle
• Opportunities for talk partners to encourage discussion and reasoning to aid learning
• Learning objective must be communicated clearly to the children
• Ensure modelling to introduce and refer to new learning – flip charts should be used to ensure necessary models remain. These can be transferred to the working wall when needed
• Teachers to model and insist on correct use of mathematical vocabulary
• Reflection at the end of the lesson to embed and reflect on learning objectives

We set home learning on platforms for Years 2 to 6 through TT Rock Stars and Mathletics so that children have opportunities to consolidate work in fun and interactive ways.

We organise interventions for Maths to address misconceptions at the point of learning. Children are given opportunities to address errors, receive further teaching or look at upcoming content and key skills needed, to ensure that we are ambitious and give all pupils the opportunity to succeed in Maths.

Impact (How what we will see as a result of the above)

We evidence impact from the following:

• evidence from learning walks
• pupil voice
• work scrutiny
• lesson observations

Assessment strategies used are:

• Marking to be done as per the school marking policy and to ensure chn respond to comments
• AFL throughout and at the end of lessons as mentioned in the lesson expectations section above
• Pre and post topic targeted assessments to be done before and after each unit and scores to be correlated (and recorded on the G drive)

These ongoing assessments demonstrate that the majority of our pupils are secure in terms of Maths content and using and applying mathematical knowledge, concepts and procedures – this all ensures readiness for the next stage of their learning.

 

	maths-vocabulary	[pdf 524KB]
	Problem solving prompts for children	[pdf 290KB]