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The national curriculum for Mathematics aims to ensure that all pupils
At Corpus Christi our intention is to provide a high-quality mathematics curriculum which promotes confidence, enjoyment and inspires curiosity about Maths. It is our belief that every maths lesson should be a hive of activity, where hands-on exploration and peer-to-peer discussion creates excitement, builds positive attitudes and ensures that children feel safe to make mistakes. We want every child to thrive and succeed in their maths lessons, enabling them to transition to secondary school as confident mathematicians with a secure foundation upon which to build in Key Stage 3 and 4. We ensure that lessons are carefully and skilfully crafted to be engaging and accessible to every learner irrespective of their ability or starting point. Through teaching for mastery, we intend our children to develop a deep-rooted and long-term understanding in all areas of Maths, allowing them to become adept in the three overarching aims of the National Curriculum. By adopting a concrete, pictorial, abstract approach in lessons, every child has access to a wide range of quality manipulatives, models, diagrams and representations, which supports their conceptual understanding.
Maths lessons take place daily across the school and are delivered through quality first teaching. Lessons are delivered as 4 Maths No Problem lessons and 1 arithmetic lesson per week. This approach introduces concepts progressively and revisits them regularly, thereby giving children the opportunity to build on and develop their skills, and ultimately to achieve mastery of them. Pupils are given regular opportunities to rehearse and apply the important mathematical facts, concepts, methods and strategies they have learned during the arithmetic sessions. Alongside the 5 lessons, there are short burst fluency lessons each day in order to develop rapid recall of number facts including times tables, number bonds and addition and subtraction facts, and to develop speed and accuracy when performing mental and written calculations.
In EYFS, pupils are give the best possible start and we recognise the importance of children becoming grounded in mathematical concepts as early as possible. To facilitate this, we ensure that there are many rich opportunities for our children to close the school entry gap and to build and apply their understanding across all areas of mathematics, with a strong emphasis on counting confidently; gaining a deep understanding of numbers to 10, vocabulary and symbols; spotting patterns and relationships within and between numbers; calculating simple addition and subtraction problems; and developing their spatial reasoning skills. All children have dedicated time to work with staff, both in small groups and on a one-to-one basis, where learning is tailored to individual needs and ability. Furthermore, there are a wide range of carefully planned maths activities and games within the continuous provision for the children to access.
In both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, maths lessons follow the Maths No Problem scheme, which is endorsed by the DfE. Each year group has four Maths No Problem lessons each week, adapted by our teachers to ensure they meet the individual needs within their classes. Each lesson has a strong emphasis on problem solving and reasoning, and immediately ‘hooks’ the children with a real-life exploration for them to investigate. They then explore different methods and strategies to solve the problems, drawing on a range of age-appropriate manipulatives and models, including cubes, counters, tens frames, rekenreks, Base Ten, number lines and bar models. During lessons, children are encouraged to articulate their learning using words, diagrams and abstract representations, in their daily maths journal. Each lesson culminates with the opportunity for children to work independently, applying their skills to a range of similar problems.
