Maths
Intent
We believe that children should have a deep understanding of maths and know how to apply it in different contexts. We want children to be able to use maths confidently in their every day life.
The National Curriculum for maths aims to ensure all pupils:
- Become fluent in the fundamentals of maths, including the varied and regular practice of increasingly complex problems over time.
- Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, understanding relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.
- Solve problems by applying their maths to a variety of problems with increasing sophistication, inclusing breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.
Implementation
At Edgware we use White Rose, alongside progression documents from the National Centre of Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics and our school calculation policy. We ensure that we provide challenge through varied and high quality activities.
We believe in teaching knowledge and skills through a concrete, pictoral to abstract approach. We pre-assess children's knowledge and understanding before teaching a topic and then use this as a starting point to plan. We assess afterwards to see if they have understood and can apply their learning to new situations.
We provide children, where needed, with a range of resources to support their learning and understanding of a particular concept.
The expectation is that the majority of pupils will move through knowledge and skills at broadly the same pace. However, decisions about when to progress are always be based on the security of pupils’ understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly will be challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content. Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material will need to consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on. We want children to have a deep understanding of maths so that future maths is built on solid foundations.
We ensure children learn key vocabulary; mathematical talk is a key learning tool for all pupils. Where necessary, pre teaching, key vocabulary is a driver for pupil understanding and develops confidence of pupils to explain mathematically and therefore consolidate and embed their conceptual understanding.
We model learning and allow children to apply their knowledge to secure and deepen their understanding further.
We break key concepts down in to steps and ensure children have plenty of opportunity to apply the concepts they have learnt in different scenarios.
Children are encouraged to explain their thinking to ensure clarity, application and embedding of concepts.
We ensure that maths is meaningful and children understand where different mathematcial skills are used and applied in everyday life.
Alongside this we have started to use times tables Rock Stars to improve children's multiplication knowledge. We also use the programme 'My Maths' to support children's learning at home and Maths Whizz/Mathletics to secure children's knowledge and understanding further. We provide a range of intervention for children who may need extra support. This includes: Precision teaching, basic skills maths groups and pre-teaching.
Learning at Home
Your child can access Times Tables Rock Stars and Mathletics from home with their login details.
Here are the links to access them.