Intent, Implementation and Impact

At Chopwell Primary School we recognise the importance of mathematics throughout each child’s every day and future life. It enables children to understand relationships and patterns in both number and space in the world around them. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. We intend to give each child the self-confidence and resilience to reach their full potential by ensuring that they have the tools to calculate fluently, reason logically, problem solve and think in abstract ways.

Intent 

• Children become confident, competent and independent mathematicians 
• Build a deep conceptual understanding of maths and its interrelated content so that children can apply their learning in different situations
• Develop children’s ability to articulate, discuss and explain their thinking using appropriate mathematical vocabulary 
• ‘Mistake friendly’ classrooms where children see mistakes as learning tools – there is an emphasis placed upon developing the power to ‘think’ rather than just the ‘do’
• Instil the mind-set in every child and staff member that everyone can do maths and that maths is for everyone…EVERYONE CAN!
• Children develop into resilient and inquisitive learners – skills needed to become life-long mathematicians
• Calculate clearly and accurately.

• Be fluent in number facts and multiplication times tables

• Deliver an inspiring and engaging mathematics curriculum, taught by highly-enthusiastic staff, which sparks curiosity and excitement and which nurtures confidence in maths

Implementation  

We teach maths daily covering all aspects of the National Curriculum, following the suggested sequence set out in the NCETM Curriculum Prioritisation units in Reception and  KS1 and White Rose Maths in KS2. We feel these provide a coherent order to our teaching of different units across the years and focus on embedding the important of number automaticity especially in Reception and KS1 ensuring mathematical foundations are ready to build on in KS2.  By frequently revisiting this core group of manipulatives and representations, year on year, the children can consolidate these essential representations and use them to support their thinking and problem solving.  

Our move to using the NCETM curriculum in Reception and KS1 was largely done to improve early number fluency in recall as well as calculation methods, automaticity of key facts and number sense.  In Reception and KS1 there are additional 15-minute whole class maths sessions following the Mastering Number Programme. In KS2 children begin their lesson with the four calculations and a Flashback 4 which consolidates written calculations, practises and embeds previous learning.

Lessons are meticulously and intelligently designed to expose children to big mathematical ideas. Teachers craft lessons which allow children to make small steps of progress and build towards mastering a concept. Vocabulary is explicitly and rigorously taught using sentence stems to develop children’s’ reasoning and explanations. Teacher’s questions are structured in ways which require critical and creative thinking to in order to solve problems.

Many lessons involve physical materials for children to use and manipulate. This allows children to make sense of the structures of mathematics whilst working in groups discussing and reasoning about their findings. This links with our focus on oracy, encouraging children to explain their thinking and use the correct vocabularly - so they learn to 'talk like a mathematician' from an early age.

We use Time Table Rock Stars to support teaching and learning. This is a system that the children use to practise the instant recall of their multiplication and division facts. When learning the times tables, speed and accuracy are important – the more facts a child remembers, the easier it becomes to complete harder calculations. Times Tables Rocks Stars is a fun and engaging programme designed to help children master their times tables. This enables children to practise daily both at home and at school. In KS1 children also have access to Numbots and White Rose Maths to support their learning both at home and school.

Impact

The impact of our aims and implementation of our aims results in an effective approach to teaching and learning. Children explore, critique, prove, disprove and play with maths in real and meaningful contexts. Making connections across the curriculum and equipping children with essential skills to reason and solve problems. End of unit and end of term assessments are used by teachers, alongside their professional judgements, to support children in the next steps of their learning. With the implementation of Mastering Number in KS1 we are beginning to see a greater understanding and depth of number fluency and automaticity throughout the school.

As a result of the mathematics teaching and learning taking place at Chopwell Primary you will find:

• Children who are increasingly confident using and understanding mathematical language
• Children who can talk and discuss problems using mathematical language and reasoning.
• Lessons that follow a clear concrete, pictorial, abstract approach so that conceptual understanding is built up over time
• Representations used repeatedly, year on year, so that children have a deep understanding of the maths being taught
• Relentless focus on the automaticity of key facts and knowledge.
• Ongoing assessment used to ensure children keep up and make good progress.

Our children think like mathematicians, behave like mathematicians and communicate like mathematicians.