Maths

Without mathematics, there’s nothing you can do. Everything around you is mathematics. Everything around you is numbers’
Shakuntala Devi, Indian writer and mental calculator

Mathematics introduces children to concepts, skills and thinking strategies that are essential in everyday life and support learning across the curriculum. It helps children make sense of the numbers, patterns and shapes they see in the world around them, offers ways of handling data in an increasingly digital world and makes a crucial contribution to their development as successful learners.

Mathematics at Looe Primary Academy

At Looe Primary Academy we believe mathematics equips pupils with a powerful set of tools to understand the world including logical reasoning and problem solving skills. Mathematics is important in everyday life and we endeavour to ensure that children develop a healthy and enthusiastic attitude towards mathematics that will stay with them for life.

Our aim is that every child leaves Looe Primary with a secure understanding of maths. We are currently developing a ‘Mastery Maths’ approach where pupils work on fluency in maths (such as number bonds and times tables) alongside reasoning and problem solving skills. Since September 2018, we have been developing this approach as part of a ‘Mastery Workgroup’ in collaboration with the Cornwall and Devon Maths Hub and we are currently (from November 2020) part of a 'Sustaining Mastery' group.

Our pupils work extremely hard alongside their teachers to become competent mathematicians. They use lots of concrete resources (such as number squares, number beads and base 10 equipment) and visual models until they are ready to move onto more abstract maths. We aspire to ensure our pupils develop fluency in basic maths skills to enable them to work efficiently on reasoning and problem solving work. Our pupils work on daily early morning fluency work (including family games in Foundation) and practise their maths in a cross-curricular way during topic work to use and apply their maths skills.

Our approach at Looe Primary ensures pupils leave us with a love of maths and have the key building blocks to use their maths successfully in life.

Aims of Maths teaching

We follow the National Curriculum for maths. Our curriculum aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice 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, using conjecture and understanding relationships to be able to justify and use mathematical language.

• Can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication

Everyone is a mathematician
The idea of someone having a maths brain and others not being able to do maths is wrong. While some children may pick up concept more quickly than others everyone has the ability to learn maths and be successful.

Concrete learning precedes conceptual learning
Evidence suggests that children learn first by doing and therefore need to use concrete objects before them can understand something conceptually. It is, therefore, essential to ensure that all children have access to concrete objects in maths lessons and are able to be them for as long as is necessary for them.

Investigating and problem solving are essential
Mathematics isn’t simply learning a body of knowledge for children to learn; it is also a set of skills which children must be able to apply effectively. Therefore, it is essential that teaching involves a diverse range of problem solving and investigating skills as frequently as possible.

Provision
It is important that classrooms are well resourced with a variety of manipulatives to support teaching of mathematics at all stages. All children should have the chance to learn through the use of manipulatives, not just younger children or lower-ability children.
Possible manipulatives could include:

Dienes, counters, multilink, place value cards, dice, numicon, cuisenaire rods, bead strings.
Measuring equipment will also be available, which should be accessed when introducing ideas so that children can have a visual concept of what they are measuring and how big the measures are.

Planning
Planning is for the teachers who will be using it. Long term plans are available for all year groups, which are based on the National Curriculum document, to ensure that coverage is correct for each year group. Additional resources are available within each school as a resource to use when planning units of work. Planning can be organised according to the teacher’s professional judgment and the needs of the class. Learning objectives are taken from the long term planning and will be clear and precise and seen within children’s work alongside steps to success.

Mental fluency
Children will have opportunity to learn and practice fluency facts including number bonds and times tables. These will be monitored by class teachers and tracked termly by maths lead to ensure children making appropriate progress and if not other programmes of study are implemented to ensure they are successful.

Assessment
Teachers use formative assessment appropriately to ensure that future planning consolidates and stretches pupils appropriately. From year 2-6, summative assessments will be used at the beginning and end of the year to show progress and confirm teacher assessment at the end of the year. However, when assessing a child’s mathematical ability, our teachers understand the importance of speaking to and questioning children. While books are a useful indicator of the work a children has covered and is capable of, they are not a totally reliable way to assess a child in isolation. Books, assessment and pupil conferencing will triangulate what children do and don’t know and will be a way to assess each child.