Mathematics

At Prince of Wales, we believe that Maths is an essential part of everyday life. Learning is, therefore, focused on children securing a strong conceptual understanding of maths and developing the fluency and self-confidence required to apply their mathematical knowledge to creatively solve problems. Through providing opportunities for children to experience real-world problems and uses of maths, children are able to practise applying their mathematical skills and see their value.

Aims

By the end of year 6, our aim is for pupils to be fluent in written methods and calculate mentally all 4 operations so that they can later apply these skills in a range of contexts.  We want to ensure pupils use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and reason mathematically, including identifying patterns, making generalisations and justifying and proving their ideas. We aim to support children to bring together their fluency and reasoning skills to solve routine and non-routine mathematical problems. We aim to sustain and develop a rich curriculum in mathematics to develop pupils’ enjoyment and interest in Mathematics and an appreciation of its contribution to all aspects of everyday life by providing a range of meaningful experiences.

Our Maths Curriculum

Our curriculum is supported by the 5 big ideas of Teaching for Mastery in association with the high-quality learning tools that the NCETM and White Rose Maths provide. Mastery practices that support all pupils, especially those with EAL, include: 

• curriculum design ensures and coherent and detailed sequence of essential content to support sustained progression over time.
• the use of representations (concrete and pictorial), stem sentences and structure to explore concepts
• variation; children making generalisations, non-examples. Including procedural variation and conceptual variation.
• fluency; being able to recall facts and procedures, efficient methods, applying these skills in different contexts.
• mathematical thinking; looking for patterns, relationships, explaining, proving.

We have adapted the White Rose curriculum and NCETM materials to suit our school in two principal ways. Firstly, we want to place increased emphasis on mental maths to ensure that children become fluent and flexible in a range of mental methods. As such, we have mapped specific mental methods and key recall facts across particular terms in each year group. We want to ensure that key number facts are learnt to automaticity, and other key mathematical facts are learned deeply and practised regularly, to avoid cognitive overload in working memory and enable pupils to focus on new learning. Secondly, to help children remember what they have learnt, we have built in additional opportunities for children to review their prior learning.

Maths Teaching

In a typical lesson, the teacher leads back and forth interaction, including questioning, short tasks, explanation, demonstration, and discussion, enabling pupils to think, reason and apply their knowledge to solve problems. The use of precise mathematical language enables all pupils to communicate their reasoning and thinking effectively

We consider mental maths to be especially important in all year groups across the school. As such, all maths lessons begin with a short counting session (this may include fractions and decimals as children get older, as well as times tables and counting in multiples of 2, 5 and 10 etc.). In addition, mental maths is further developed with specific time set aside in maths lessons to learn key recall facts: these include number bonds for younger children and times tables for older children. We also develop children’s fluency and ensure they do not forget what they have learnt by giving them several opportunities every week to practise the most essential skills, primarily related to number and calculations, that they have already learnt. Arithmetic is practised throughout the week; during lessons and during specific arithmetic slots.

Children are taught to problem solve and think critically through high quality teacher modelling through the use of ‘I see problem solving’ and White Rose Hub materials.