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Mathematics @ SLE

The charms of mathematics only reveal themselves to those who have the courage to go deeply into it.
- Carl Friedrich Gauss

Intent

At Shortlanesend School, the teaching and learning of mathematics is a high priority as we recognise it as an essential skill for life. Our mathematics curriculum incorporates sustained levels of challenge through varied and high quality activities with a focus on:

  • fluency
  • reasoning
  • problem solving

All our children are provided with opportunities to explore mathematics in depth, using mathematical vocabulary to reason and explain their workings. A wide range of mathematical resources are used and pupils are taught to show their workings in a concrete fashion, before establishing ways of pictorially and formally representing their understanding. They are taught to explain their choice of methods and develop their mathematical reasoning skills.

Our children learn the lesson of perseverance as they discover resilience and acceptance that struggle is often a necessary step in learning. Our teachers. whenever naturally possible, link mathematics learning to the termly topic of our immersive curriculum and continuously provide opportunity for mathematics to be applied in ‘real life’ contexts. This may involve outdoor learning experiences such as visiting the local village shop, or conducting a traffic survey.

Across their mathematical journey through our school, all children are challenged to reflect on their knowledge and progression by asking themselves how do I learn more, remember more and understand more.

 

Implementation

We strive to offer a Maths curriculum that is consistent, sustainable and progressive through continuously looking at ways in which we can enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics within our school. All teachers are passionate about the teaching of mathematics, and strive to ensure the context of mathematics is firmly embedded in the learning experiences of all children.

In the early years setting, a mathematics curriculum has been implemented which builds on an emphasis on number and key knowledge. Mathematics is woven throughout the school day, as well as being taught in discreet, hands-on adult-guided lessons. Children take pride in their daily routine of exploring the weather, seasons and dates through singing, stories and discussions. Self-registration provides further mathematical opportunities through real-life contexts, using visual five and ten-frames and part-whole models meaning that children are applying these mathematical concepts naturally through their everyday routines and interactions.

In order to meet expectations within the National Curriculum we ensure that all of our children develop a deep and sustainable understanding of mathematical concepts through a mathematics curriculum that promotes a rich understanding of mathematical concepts taught in small steps in a systematic way. We implement our approach through our structured SLE lesson sequence that ensures high-quality teaching and learning, delivering appropriately challenging work for all individuals. 

Children are supported by having access to a range of mathematical resources in classrooms including Numicon, Base10 and counters. We encourage all our children to support their personal learning by choosing support materials they believe will best support them with their current task. We also use a range of planning resources, including those provided by the White Rose Hubs and NCETM.

We continuously reflect on our practices and strive to better ourselves. We receive support from Aspire's Maths Lead, the local Maths Hub and across our 'Hub' Schools. Staff are constantly encouraged to seek and attend training opportunities and regional networking events.

All our teachers and TAs have worked tirelessly to improve our children’s understanding of Maths through the development of the Teaching for Mastery approach within our school. This has involved training on each of the principles of teaching for Mastery, demonstration Lessons in KS1 and in KS2, staff reflection groups on own practice, planning support, coaching and mentoring and enhancing our classroom mathematical environments.

We involve parents and guardians through the running of 'workshops' to help better inform them of the content, steps and layout of our calculation policy, with the aim to ensure support coming from home effectively co-ordinates with in-school learning.

 Through our teaching we continuously monitor pupils’ progress against expected attainment for their age, making formative assessment notes where appropriate and using these to inform our discussions in termly Pupil Meetings and update our summative assessment tracker. The main purpose of all assessments is to always ensure that we are providing personalised provision for every child, ensuring that they are able to develop and progress in their maths knowledge and understanding.

Impact
 
The impacts of mathematics teaching and learning at Shortlanesend School are:
  • Our children have a deeper understanding of mathematics and are able to relate it to real world concepts
  • An environment is created where all children can through open questioning and encouragement to ‘talk maths’
  • teachers care more about the journey to finding an answer than how many answers the children get correct.
  • Children are developing skills in being articulate and are able to reason well verbally, pictorially and in written form
  • Through a combination of Mastery our ethos [Smile - Learn - Excel] children's enjoyment of maths and the levels of engagement have increased
  • Children are demonstrating a quicker recall of facts and mathematical procedures
  • Children have more confidence when attempting to tackle problems.
  • Children are beginning and continue to develop fluidity and flexibility to use different representations to help them to problem-solve

Shortlanesend School
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