Bishop Tufnell CE (Aided) Primary School Maths

Intent

At Bishop Tufnell CE Primary School we recognise that Mathematics is essential to everyday life, important to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for becoming money-wise and financially literate.

We aim to provide a high-quality mathematics education with an approach that enables all children to:

• become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics 
• reason mathematically;
• solve problems by applying their mathematics.(National Curriculum 2014)

Implementation

At Bishop Tufnell we use the White Rose Maths Scheme, which has been written to support teachers in all aspects of their planning whilst delivering an ambitious, connected curriculum to all pupils.

As part of the planning process, teachers need to plan the following for mathematics lessons:

• Precise questioning to support conceptual and procedural understanding.
• How concrete apparatus will be used to scaffold, within the CPA approach, making connections between different representations.
• The use of mathematical language, providing opportunities for pupils to discuss the mathematics they are doing and to take ideas further.
• Tasks and challenge questions to challenge pupils to apply and deepen their learning and mathematical reasoning.

In the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), we relate the mathematical aspects of the children's work to the Development Matters statements and the Early Learning Goals (ELG), as set out in the EYFS profile document. Mathematics development involves providing children with opportunities to practise and improve their skills in counting numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems, and to describe shapes, spaces, and measures. The profile for Mathematics areas of learning are Number and shape, space and measures. We continually observe and assess children against these areas using their age-related objectives, and plan the next steps in their mathematical development through a topic-based curriculum.

There are opportunities for children to encounter Maths throughout the EYFS (both inside and outside) – through both planned activities and the self-selection of easily accessible quality maths resources. Whenever possible children’s interests are used to support delivering the mathematics curriculum.

Towards the end of Reception teachers aim to draw the elements of a daily mathematics lesson together so that by the time children move into Year 1 they are familiar with a structured lesson / activity.

Impact

Our mathematics curriculum is based upon ‘White Rose Maths’ resources which are fully supported by the Department for Education as they meet the requirements of the 2014 curriculum. White Rose Maths provides all the elements that teachers need to teach Maths with confidence and encourage children to talk using maths language. We measure our impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes;
• The use of ‘hot and cold’ tasks. Each pupil completes a cold task at the beginning of each topic. Each pupil completes a hot task shortly after the end of each topic. Children mark their own tasks so they can see their progress. The tasks show the progress made in each topic.
• Pupil discussions about their learning.