This Mathematics statement is underpinned by the School Curriculum Intent statement and our school vision of ‘Together we grow, achieve and celebrate’.

Intent

At Woolaston Primary School, we believe Mathematics is a creative and highly interconnected subject that is essential to everyday life.

It is our intent, that our provision, along with our school values, will provide children with a foundation for understanding Mathematics by reasoning, thinking logically and problem solving. They will do this by being resilient individuals so that they are fully prepared for the future. Our aim is to develop a positive culture of deep understanding, confidence and competence in Mathematics where children are independent and risk takers. It is also our ambition, that through Mathematics, we will teach our children about cultural diversity and what it is to be globally aware.

By adopting a Mastery approach, it is also intended that all children, regardless of their starting point, will leave Woolaston Primary School with an appreciation and enthusiasm for Maths, resulting in a lifelong positive relationship with Mathematics.

We do this by:

• Providing opportunities for fluency, reasoning and problem-solving across each lesson
• Adopting the ‘Practise it, Do it, Secure it and Deepen it’ approach.
• Delivering a mastery approach where there are no pre conceived ideas of what a child can achieve
• Delivering a curriculum that represents Mathematics through CONCRETE, PICTORIAL and ABSTRACT representations that encourage deeper understanding of mathematical concepts.
• Delivering and teaching key mathematical vocabulary so that children can reason and explain mathematically, both orally and through written words across the whole school.
• Planning from the mastery approach, with the guidance of the Can Do scheme (and using other schemes to support). Mathematics is planned so that there are clear, cohesive steps to success, across weekly, termly and yearly.

Implementation

At Woolaston Primary School, we deliver two daily Mathematics sessions in KS1, KS2:

• main teaching lesson
• Maths on Track meetings (M.O.T)

In EYFS, the curriculum is delivered through two main approaches:

• main teaching lesson
• learning through play

Each of our Mathematics sessions include a balance of Fluency (Do it), Reasoning (Secure it) and Problem-solving (Deepen it). In the main Maths session, we use our whole school learning behaviours to encourage children to be: good listeners by engaging in the lesson through responding to questioning and engaging in the strategies, vocabulary and tasks they are set; to be a risk taker by having a ‘Can Do’ attitude towards Maths across fluency, reasoning and problem solving; being resilient as learners so that they can overcome mistakes and learn from them; to be able to work collaboratively with others by discussing and sharing their ideas, thoughts, reasons and justifications.

Our Maths on Track meetings are designed to focus on key skills that link to the prior learning that has taken place. These sessions are used to deepen understanding and can take different forms (arithmetic, problem solving, manipulative work etc.)

In EYFS, Mathematics will often take a slightly different approach; it involves providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills across the Mathematics curriculum (counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems and to describe shapes, spaces, and measure) through play, discussion, questioning and exploring. These activities are often child-initiated and adult-directed.

In lessons, work is adapted by the teacher so that it is differentiated/scaffolded to the individual child so that they can access the lesson. This can be done through use of manipulatives, different strategies, adult support, visual aids and further differentiation.

The use of concrete resources including Numicon, Base 10 and place value counters, fractions walls etc. and pictorial representations (paper-based and use of programs such as Maths Bot) are used to help learners understand the structure of the maths they are learning.

We use the CUBES approach to problem-solving to develop the link between pictorial and abstract and a deeper understanding of mathematical concept.

We use the Can Do scheme to support our maths curriculum; we follow the scheme of learning and adjust it to suit our learners to allow them to make the best progress.

We also use a wide range of resources to further develop fluency, reasoning and problem solving: Nrich, MathsBot, White Rose, NCETM, Classroom Secrets

National Curriculum and the EYFS curriculum is referenced to support our planning process.

Impact

At Woolaston Primary school, we aim:

• Children leave Woolaston Primary School with a life-long appreciation and love for Mathematics
• For attainment to be in line across EYFS, Year 2, Year 4 and Year 6 with the national average or above
• To have a higher than national average of children who are working above their age related expectations 
• Hold pupil voice meetings – children will be engaged, will enjoy Mathematics and can talk positively/confidently about the subject
• Complete lesson observations and learning walks to show clear enjoyment of learning, confidence in Maths, approaches, representations, strategies and a balance of fluency, reasoning and problem solving
• Pupil progress meetings/data looks take place to follow the progress of focus children and identify support where needed.
• NFER assessments further help us identify children for next steps
• Progress tracker (INSIGHT) shows attainment and progress made by individuals and key groups.

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