Maths

Mathematics

At Bishop Martin CE Primary School our Guiding LIGHT Curriculum is built around the National Curriculum, enriched to reflect the children and community we teach.

We strive to provide a curriculum that is underpinned by our Christian Values, which are embedded in the life and work of our school, and to allow all our children to 'Let their Light Shine'. 

Let Your Light Shine Before Others So They May See Your Good Deeds' (Matthew 5.16)  ​

 

National Curriculum - Purpose of Study

Mathematics is a creative and highly interconnected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. A high-quality mathematics education therefore provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.

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.

Intent Statement

At Bishop Martin CE Primary School, we provide a high-quality Mathematics education utilising a mastery approach so that all children: become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics; are able to reason mathematically with increasing articulacy and can solve problems by applying their understanding to a variety of problems. Our inclusive Mathematics Curriculum provides challenge for all pupils, which can be seen broadening the children's depth of understanding through sophisticated problems, rather than learning new content. Our Mathematics Curriculum aims to develop the five core mathematical competencies in all our learners - therefore providing a foundation for our children to understand the world around them, knowing both the beauty and power of Mathematics in its own right and how it can be applied to other subjects across the curriculum, including Science and Computing. 

 

Implementation

Curriculum Planning

At Bishop Martin Church of England Primary School, our mathematics planning from EYFS through to Year 6 is informed (not dictated) by use of Maths-No Problem! - a high-quality mastery scheme of work, setting high aspirations for all children. We teach five Mathematics lessons each week to ensure full content coverage, which also includes ‘Flashback Four’ to ensure key concepts are retrieved and retained when learning has moved on. As well as our five core Mathematics lessons, teachers from Year One – Year Six will also teach a weekly, 30-minute arithmetic lesson. This will focus on arithmetic concepts, as well as counting and times tables. Maths – No Problem, which is a spiral curriculum, ensures that each lesson sequentially builds on the prior learning, highlighting the need for retention. Topics consolidate understanding, while also increasing in complexity allowing new learning to be related to previous learning aiding retrieval.

Maths - No Problem! provides a series of carefully sequenced lessons enabling new knowledge and skills to be built upon what has been previously taught and pupils can work towards clearly defined end points. However, our highly skilled teachers are then able to reflect and adapt the teaching sequence appropriately (dependent on pupil’s knowledge) to provide further opportunities for practise, consolidation and an increasing depth of conceptual understanding.  The sequence and speed of lesson delivery is dictated by pupil understanding with ‘whitespace lessons’ and prioritisation of ‘key lessons’ utilised where appropriate to embed the most fundamental concepts (see Lesson Classification Guide).  This ensures that all statutory National Curriculum coverage is met, with additional coverage of deeper non-statutory content if time allows and the need is there.

Long Term Plan

Our Mathematics long-term plan clearly stipulates the order of topics taught in each age group in each term, so that new knowledge and skills can build on what has been taught before and towards our clearly defined end points – thus ensuring our long-term is taught in its entirety year-on-year. This plan follows Maths – No Problem’s recommended long-term plan but has been amended to meet the needs of our school community by addressing identified gaps in pupils’ knowledge and taking into consideration statutory testing.  At Bishop Martin Church of England Primary School, Maths – No Problem! Foundations scheme of work is used to support and form the basic outline for our curriculum offer in Reception. This is a full-year programme of teaching and learning activities, exercises and stories to deliver a firm foundation for developing Maths Mastery in Key Stage One. Once teaching and learning has taken place, there are opportunities for the children to further develop this knowledge in areas of provision both indoors and out.  Across the school, daily Mathematics retrieval sessions take place across all classes at the beginning of each lesson – we have named this ‘Flashback Four’. Teachers used their judgement and knowledge to provide the children with further opportunities to embed and recall previous learning, whether this is from the current year or previous. Teachers also use QLA to identify gaps in knowledge when planning this. As well as this, children begin each afternoon completing ‘Going for Gold’, in which they are expected to answer questions with fluency and speed. The time and length expectation of this increases as the year/children progress.

Medium Term Plans

Teachers will use the long-term plan in collaboration with the Maths – No Problem website to support with their medium-term planning. They must consider the number of lessons stated on the long-term plan and use their judgement to decide whether the children need further exploration with concrete materials or an additional ‘white space’ lesson to address misconceptions and deepen knowledge.

Lesson Planning

Lesson Part	Lesson Feature
Flashback Four	Each lesson opens with a retrieval task, this allows children to retrieve prior knowledge to support retention.
Explore Task	The Maths - No Problem lesson begins with a real-life problem called an 'explore task', which develops children's reading skills. Children tackle the problem using the concrete, pictorial, abstract approach and record their ideas in a journal following extensive exploration and discussion.
Guided Practice	With the methodology discussed, the children use this learning in the Guided Practice section. They work through the problems together and continue to talk to each other and share ideas.
Implementation Practice	For the final part of the lesson, children complete the independent task in their workbook. Initially, the questions are scaffolded. However, as the children work through the questions, the scaffolding is reduced and the questions increase in difficulty.

 

Times Table Rock Stars

We are currently enrolled on the Times Tables Rock Stars programme at Bishop Martin. This gives the children the core understanding of their times tables which is essential in other areas of Maths. Every child in Year Two upwards have personal log ins for TT Rock Stars. Click here to access the website. We ask that you encourage your child to practice on the app at home as much as possible. It's a fun an effective way for them to learn their times tables.

 

Impact

 

Our Mathematics Curriculum intends to provide the children with a broad and balanced curriculum that meets the needs of all learning in our school.

Through high-quality delivery we aim to:

• Improve results in EYFS, Key Stage One and Key Stage Two and ensure that children with SEND make good progress.
• Close the gap in assessment data in arithmetic and reasoning.
• Improve the rate in which the children can recall key mathematical facts.

 

Impact will show through formative assessment throughout the maths lessons and marking of books. This will be used to support and identify specific areas children need to develop. This knowledge will then impact on the daily planning of lessons to support and develop these specific areas.

Summative test will also be given at the end of each term. Year 2 and 6 complete year group specific test papers. Year groups 1, 3, 4 and 5 will complete NFER test. These will be placed onto the system AskEddi which will give each class a closer question analysis to support the specific areas.