Maths 

"Without mathematics, there’s nothing you can do. Everything around you is mathematics. Everything around you is numbers".

— Shakuntala Devi, Indian writer and mental calculator

Intent

Maths is a subject essential to every day life: critical to science, technology and engineering and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. Maths is a journey and our Mathematicians at Mattersey will explore, practice and apply their learning over time, building up their knowledge to develop their understanding, skills and confidence. At Mattersey Primary School, we have identified the ‘Key Skills’ for Maths that are fundamental to pupils’ learning and skills in this subject; they are the non negotiables that pupils must acquire in order to be successful mathematicians.

Implementation

At Mattersey Primary School we want to ensure our daily Maths lessons are delivered in a way that develop lively, enquiring minds and encourage pupils to become self-motivated and confident in their learning.

We teach Maths from EYFS to Year 6, and have given this subject a whole school teaching slot every morning, which enables teachers to stream children across the school if necessary. We are aware of the challenges of teaching multiple age groups in one class and so our teaching staff are skilled in working with groups of pupils, and in differentiation, to ensure that pupils are working on an age-related and appropriate curriculum. This is particularly important when teaching Maths in order to meet the specific needs of each age group for this subject. We build on progression of knowledge through our use of Key Skills in Maths from EYFS to Year 6.

For Key Stage 1 and 2 pupils, we follow the Hamilton Trust scheme to inform our planning and this was chosen due to its episodic structure; to ensure pupils have plenty of opportunities to revisit their learning to consolidate their understanding, as well as to ensure coherent coverage of the curriculum.  Short blocks of teaching units and regular repetition of key skills support children’s understanding and help them to secure a firm grasp of the knowledge they need. For EYFS pupils, we use the White Rose scheme to inform our planning as it uses texts to teach mathematical knowledge which fits our ethos for learning through literature. 

Across school, lessons have the ‘Big Question’ approach, which supports children’s understanding of the key learning within each lesson. Furthermore, the Success criteria presented to children as Red/Amber/Green statements help to ensure that they are very clear about how they can show their achievements in this subject.

Staff adapt the planning to meet the needs of our pupils and we also access resources from White Rose Maths and use IXL and Times Tables Rockstars, which pupils can access from home to support with their Maths learning. Within a weekly sequence of lessons, children are given specific opportunities to reason and problem solve.  Discrete opportunities to reason and problem solve are provided and these skills are also integrated in to other curriculum areas as often as possible to support children’s continued development of problem solving and reasoning skills.  

In the Foundation Stage, pupils work on a pathway of blocks each term to work towards the EYFS Development Matters Statements and the Early Learning Goals (ELGs) which include: number, counting, shapes and patterns, measure, addition and subtraction, time and money. 

In Key Stage 1, pupils will develop their ability  and skills in a range of areas: number and place value, addition and subtraction, measures, shape, time, fractions, multiplication and division.

In Key Stage 2, pupils will develop their ability and skills in a range of areas: number and place value, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, fractions and decimals, measure, data and shape, time, algebra and ratio.

Our pupils will increase in confidence with number fluency, reasoning and problem solving as they progress through our school. 

Impact

Our Mathematicians at Mattersey Primary will become fluent in mathematical understanding and reasoning. They will have quick recall of facts and be able to solve problems by applying their mathematical knowledge with increasing sophistication and will persevere in seeking solutions.

Maths Progression document for EYFS to Year 6:

Here is an overview for each year group of these key skills in Maths: 

INTENT, IMPLEMENTATION, IMPACT: