SaltwoodMaths Curriculum
Maths at Saltwood
Intent
Maths is all around us, all of the time, every day. As a result, we strive to plan and teach engaging and informative maths lessons so that all of our children leave Saltwood with a strong understanding of the fundamentals of primary level maths, as set out in the National Curriculum. Having the ability to process number, calculate fluently, identify patterns and reason with numbers in order to overcome real-life situations will help our children in their future education and working lives.
Implementation
By following the carefully considered White Rose Maths curriculum, each child, from EYFS up to Year 6, will have the opportunity to learn and explore maths in a series of small, progressive steps and become proficient in the written calculations for the four operations. These skills help the children across the curriculum, particularly in Science where they collect, record and analyse data.
Aims
The national curriculum for mathematics aims to ensure that all pupils:
- Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
- Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.
- Can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.
The ‘Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract’ approach helps our children develop their learning through the stages of ‘doing’, ‘seeing’ and ‘symbolic notation’. Children of all ages can access maths manipulatives and learn to use pictorial forms to help them understand their learning.
We believe that children can demonstrate a true and deep understanding of mathematical concepts by explaining their thinking orally, so we encourage our children to talk through their thinking and reasoning, in addition to recording it in more traditional ways.
Impact
The children’s learning can be seen in their exercise books, Homework activities and through their White Rose Maths and NTS assessments.
Our EYFS profiles, Year 4 Multiplication Tables Check and KS2 SATs outcomes compare well against national averages.
Assessment
Regular assessment (through tests, daily marking and observation) allows our staff to identify the areas for development and devise plans and interventions to address them, working hard to keep all children working at a very similar level.
We assess Mathematics in two ways: formative on a daily / weekly basis and also using White Rose end of units tests at the start and end of units, as Cold Tasks and Hot Tasks respectively. These assessments are used to inform future planning.
We assess summatively at the end of Terms 2, 4 and 6 using NTS tests. These tests are standardised nationally and enable us to benchmark ourselves against a much wider group. Year 6 use past SATs papers in place of the NTS assessments from Term 3 onwards.
All classes include arithmetic fluency work in their daily maths lesson. As the children progress through the school, they undertake weekly, or fortnightly, arithmetic tests. Staff undertake GAP analysis of these papers, the findings of which become the foci of daily arithmetic work. The aim of this arithmetic work is to improve our children’s mental recall, procedural fluency and automaticity, freeing up space in their working memory to focus more on the reasoning and application elements in their maths work.
SEND in Maths
Teachers plan lessons in order to maximise the number of pupils who will achieve the learning objective in each lesson. If a child needs additional support to understand a concept, this will be done as intervention work prior to the next lesson (when possible) so as to help them achieve success before tackling the next step in their learning. Intervention work can be delivered at an individual level, or to groups of children. Whole class misconceptions are addressed before learning moves on.
From time to time there will be a child in a class who needs an entirely different curriculum as their needs are more complex. In this case, their learning will be adapted to suit their needs. They will not be working on the year group below as this is close to their own year group and with support, they will be able to access aspects of their own year group’s learning. In some cases, the child might have their learning in a year group that is below their own year group and their learning may be supported by an additional adult. This approach will only be used for children who are accessing the curriculum well below their chronological year group.
Please follow our links for our Calculation Policy and the White Rose Maths schemes of work for each class.
Advice for Parents
A glossary of mathematical terms
