Maths at Grenoside Community Primary School

Statement of intent for maths at Grenoside Primary School

At Grenoside, we aim to:

• Develop a love of learning in maths and encourage children to think of themselves as ‘mathematicians’.
• Provide children with an understanding of the uses of mathematical knowledge in everyday life.
• Develop skills that will prepare children for life beyond primary school and future employment.
• Ensure children are fluent in the fundamentals of maths so they develop the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately with increasing complexity. This is a necessity for reasoning and problem solving.
• Develop upon children’s fluency, reasoning and problem solving skills each year so they can apply knowledge of maths when solving problems, conducting investigations, constructing arguments and explaining concepts.
• Ensure children develop the skills to make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems.
• Provide each pupil with the chance to develop the power of resilience and perseverance when faced with mathematical challenges.
• Ensure that children can demonstrate their conceptual and procedural understanding and their ability to investigate, reason and problem solve.
• Make certain that all children have access to the curriculum, enabling them to achieve confidence and competence.

Statement of implementation for maths at Grenoside Primary School

Teaching & Learning

Maths lessons at Grenoside Primary School are timetabled; 

• Y1 (5 maths lessons taught across two weeks and a maths meeting on the other days)
• Y2 and LKS2 (4 main lessons a week with a consolidation/key knowledge lesson once a week)
• UKS2 (5 main lessons a week)

Teaching is designed to embed learning for the long term, allowing children to recall and build upon previous learning and apply this to new, larger or abstract concepts that are found beyond the classroom. Resilience, Reciprocity, Resourcefulness, and Reflectiveness are entwined in the teaching of maths to develop a ‘can do’ mind-set so that children value maths and can use their skills appropriately inside and outside the classroom, in this school and into the future. 

Lessons place mathematical learning in the wider context of a person’s learning journey and progression, relating their learning and understanding to real-life scenarios where they will apply that skill and knowledge. Children are shown examples of significant people in the history of maths and appreciate how their own learning relates to such people and their mathematical discoveries. 

Teaching staff present subject matter clearly, promoting appropriate discussion about the subject matter being taught. They check learners understanding systematically, identify misconceptions accurately and provide clear direct feedback.

Lessons at Grenoside regularly include fluency, reasoning and problem solving aspects that drive learning towards Mastery, using resources from White Rose Maths and NCETM materials. Teachers build upon previous learning, incorporating challenge, discussion, reasoning (orally and written) giving children the opportunity to develop their mathematical proficiency and problem solving skills. 

Feedback is given on children’s learning in line with our feedback policy. Formative assessment within lessons helps teachers to identify the children who need more support to achieve the intended outcome and who are ready for greater stretch and challenge through planned questioning or additional activities.

Children with additional needs are included in whole class lessons and teachers provide scaffolding and relevant support as necessary. For those children who are working outside of the year group curriculum, individual learning targets apply.

Vocabulary

Learning in each unit of work will incorporate the precise use of important mathematical vocabulary so that children will build, over time, a repertoire of appropriate, subject specific vocabulary in maths enabling them to reason about their learning as well as solve problems.

Precise and consistent approaches will be displayed by all staff, in all year groups e.g.

subtraction, regrouping/exchange, arrays, Dienes, compensating method.

Learning Environment

Each classroom at Grenoside has a display area specific to the teaching of maths. These display areas contain a mixture of relevant working examples to support the learning for that unit of work alongside an element of celebration of children’s learning in that unit. These walls are used and referred to by teachers and children, are interactive and used for current learning (being updated for a new unit of work), have key vocabulary displayed to reinforce children using this vocabulary when they are reasoning and discussing mathematical concepts, show relevant calculation strategies and methods and have examples of the Concrete Pictorial Abstract approach which is relevant to that unit of work.  

Teaching of maths at Grenoside will follow the mastery approach which incorporates the use of manipulatives (Numicon, Base 10, Rekenrek, Deines, cubes, number line, 100 square, clocks, 2D and 3D shapes, measures equipment) and pictorial representations (part-partwhole models, bar models, ten frames, place value counters) to support pupils understanding and progression to abstract mathematical ideas.

Statement of impact for maths at Grenoside Primary School

The impact of our mathematics curriculum at Grenoside is that children understand the relevance and importance of what they are learning in relation to real world concepts. Children know that maths is a vital life skill that they will rely on in many areas of their daily life. At Grenoside, pupils have a positive view of maths due to learning in an environment where maths is promoted as being an exciting and enjoyable subject in which they can investigate and ask questions; they know that it is OK to be ‘wrong’ and that this can strengthen their learning because the journey to finding an answer is most important. Children are confident to ‘have a go’ and choose the equipment they need to help them to learn along with the strategies they think are best suited to each problem. Grenoside pupils have a good understanding of their strengths and next steps for development in maths and what they need to do to improve. Our maths books evidence work of a high standard of which children clearly take pride; the range of activities demonstrate good coverage of fluency, reasoning and problem solving and feedback and interventions support children to strive to be the best mathematicians they can be, ensuring a high proportion of children are on track or above. The standards for maths in the school are high. We moderate our books internally and children are achieving well. Pupils are appropriately challenged based on their prior learning and performance in lessons.