Carlton Colville Primary School

Mathematics teaches children how to make sense of the world around them through developing their ability to calculate fluently, reason and solve problems. It enables children to understand relationships and patterns in both number and space in the world around them. Through their growing knowledge and understanding, children learn to appreciate how Maths is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment.
Our aims of teaching mathematics are:

• to teach the children to see themselves as Mathematicians, think like Mathematicians and develop a growth mindset that ensures effective learning.
• to broaden and deepen children’s conceptual knowledge, skills and understanding in Maths, alongside developing their procedural fluency on a journey towards mastery.
• to promote confidence and competence with understanding and using numbers and the number system, developing good ‘number sense.’
• to equip children with the ability to reason, generalise and make sense of solutions.
• to develop the ability to solve problems through decision-making and reasoning in a wide range of contexts, and in other curriculum areas;
• to develop children’s ability to move between concrete, iconic/pictorial and symbolic/abstract representations fluently and confidently.
• to make connections within Maths as well as understanding the importance of mathematics in, and making connections with, other curriculum areas (including STEM subjects) and everyday life.
• to promote enjoyment and curiosity in Maths through practical activity, exploration, investigation and discussion;
• to develop an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics.
• to develop a practical understanding of the ways in which information is gathered and presented;
• to explore features of shape and space, and develop measuring skills in a range of contexts;
• to enable children to select and use a range of mathematical tools effectively.
• to equip children with a wide range of mathematical vocabulary and the mathematical language needed to understand problems and explain their methods and reasoning. There is an ‘Essential Vocabulary Concept List’ for each year group. We expect the majority of pupils to know this vocabulary by the end of that year.
• to promote and provide opportunities for children to develop the core learning skills of confidence, determination, curiosity, aspiration, teamwork, independence, communication and focus in and through Mathematics.

Teaching and learning style

The school understands that children learn in different ways, and so uses a variety of teaching styles in mathematics, adapting to the needs of the children as necessary and appropriate. During our daily lessons we encourage children to ask as well as answer mathematical questions. We develop their ability to independently select and use appropriate concrete apparatus to support their conceptual understanding and build procedural fluency as part of the ‘Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) approach. They have the opportunity to independently access and use a wide range of resources, such as bead frames, bead strings, number lines, Dienes/ Base 10 apparatus, place value counters, Numicon, multilink, place value cards, Cuisenaire rods and other small apparatus to support their work. We develop the children’s ability to represent problems using visualisation skills, jottings and pictorial representations such as Empty Number Lines, the ‘Bar Model’, 100 squares and their own ideas. Mathematical dictionaries are available and their use ins encouraged whenever and wherever appropriate. ICT is used in mathematics lessons for modelling ideas and methods. Wherever possible, we provide meaningful contexts and encourage the children to apply their learning to everyday situations. At all times the policy aims are the drivers behind the planning and delivery of lessons.
           We aim for children to achieve mastery of the key areas and domains in Maths, maximising attainment and progress for all pupils. We believe that conceptual fluency and procedural fluency should be developed in tandem, with neither being at the expense of the other, however we recognize and understand that they do not always necessarily develop at the same time or rate. There are times when one will develop in advance of the other- this is fine so long as the other is not forgotten and continues to develop. The end goal is mastery of both elements. The expectation is that the majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace. However, decisions about when to progress will 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 consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on. We achieve this through a range of strategies, such as the use of differentiated challenges, booster programmes (such as 1^stClass@Number and Success@Arithmetic) and SEN intervention programmes (such as Dynamo Maths, Numicon-Closing the Gap, Plus 1 and Power of 2 1:1 programmes). There is also the use of peer-support pairs and guided or targeted input from the teacher, teaching assistants and learning support assistants. Teaching assistants support all children, based on ongoing formative assessment.