Intent
At Horndale our Maths curriculum revolves around the aims of the 2014 National Curriculum for Maths which focuses carefully on end of year group and key stage expectations. It ensures continuity and progression in the teaching of mathematics and aims to ensure that all children:
- Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics.
- Are able top reason mathematically.
- Can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems.
These key skills are thoroughly embedded within our maths lessons throughout school and are developed consistently over time.
We believe that Mathematics equips all pupils with a powerful set of tools which can be used to understand and change the world, therefore we are committed to ensuring that our children recognise the importance of Maths in everyday life. Our intention is that all children develop a love of Maths and a confidence in applying their learning to everyday, real life contexts. It is our intent that children develop a strong number sense so that as their confidence grows, they will be able to look for patterns, manipulate numbers to make calculations easier, work out calculations mentally, begin to use logical reasoning, suggest solutions, and enjoy playing with and exploring numbers. We intend to expose children to a wide range of concrete resources, such as Numicon and Base 10, to support their mathematical understanding before modelling the use of pictorial representations. By having this strong foundation, it is our intent that children are then confident in eventually using abstract representations in Maths. Children are also given the opportunity to practice Arithmetic and basic maths skills in our daily ‘Mental Maths’ sessions to ensure key mathematical concepts are embedded and children can recall this information to see the links between topics in Maths.
Implementation
At Horndale, children study mathematics daily and in doing so they cover a broad and balanced mathematical curriculum including elements of number, calculation, geometry, measures, and statistics. Alongside daily maths sessions an additional 15 minutes a day is spent focusing on arithmetic and basic maths skills which is aimed at ensuring consolidation in the key areas of mathematics. Where possible we also aim to teach maths in a cross curricular manner making links with other subjects across the wider curriculum.
In implementing the curriculum:
- Teachers use careful and precise questioning in class to draw out discussions and assess children regularly to identify those requiring intervention, so that all children keep up.
- Teachers carefully lead children through strategies for solving problems.
- A range of reasoning resources are used to challenge all children and give them the opportunity to reason with their understanding.
- Interventions are used to support children to ensure children are ready for their next Maths lesson.
- Children are taught through targeted differentiated small group and mixed ability whole class lessons.
- Lessons use a Concrete, Pictorial and Abstract approach to guide children through their understanding of mathematical processes.
Impact
As a result of this, we hope that at Horndale you will see;
- Engaged children who are all challenged appropriately.
- Children who are confident in talking about Maths and their learning and the links between Mathematical topics.
- Lessons that use a variety of resources to support learning.
- Different representations of mathematical concepts.
- Learning that is tracked and monitored to ensure all children make good progress.
