Intent

At Wanstead Church School, our Maths curriculum is designed to empower all children to become mathematicians and to achieve and shine in Maths. We teach a secure and deep understanding of mathematical concepts through manageable steps.

We develop Wisdom, Compassion and Strength in our Maths curriculum:

Wisdom: Our Maths curriculum ensures every child works towards a common goal of fluency in the fundamentals of Mathematics, with strong reasoning skills and the ability to not only solve problems but find satisfaction and enjoyment in problem solving, providing every child with a sense of achievement and appreciation of the beauty of Maths.

Compassion: Our Maths curriculum provides opportunities for children to work together in sharing their reasoning, and not only supporting but also challenging each other's justifications in a productive manner. Our mastery approach to the teaching of Maths ensures all children, regardless of ability, are able to succeed. Our children learn to appreciate the interconnectedness of Maths and the richness that comes from collaborative learning within other areas of the curriculum.

Strength: Our Maths curriculum enables children to show strength by building resilience, curiosity and enthusiasm towards the subject. It encourages children to move fluently between their skills, applying them to Science and other subjects. Our Maths curriculum is used as a foundation for understanding the world.            

Implementation

At Wanstead Church School, we teach daily Mathematics to all children, whatever their ability or individual need, using the Power Maths scheme. Through our quality first Mathematics teaching, we provide learning opportunities that enable all children to make good progress. In Key Stage 1 and for Key Stage 2, sessions last for approximately one hour. In lessons, children often complete work in their Power Maths books. The children also have a Maths Journal where they are encouraged to make their own recordings in response to tasks which are carefully prepared by the teacher. The Maths Journals are used in a variety of circumstances:

• When a child has completed the work in their Power Maths book and is continuing to deepen understanding and build on reasoning skills.
• If the lesson is in addition to a Power Maths lesson either to pre-teach skills or to continue to build on skills if a child needs more time.
• If a child needs more support and further questions to secure understanding.
• When a starter or practical activity is completed and recorded.
• When a child completes a challenge or extension activity.
• Any additional calculation work is completed.

In the Foundation Stage children experience short Mathematics inputs from the teacher followed by practical activities within the provision. The Foundation Stage curriculum feeds into the National Curriculum.

We aim for children to master the key areas and domains in Mathematics, narrowing the gap between the most and least able learners, whilst allowing deeper learning to take place throughout sessions. The expectation is that the majority of children will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace. However, decisions about when to progress will always be based on the security of children’s understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage. Children who grasp concepts rapidly are challenged to deepen their understanding by being offered rich and sophisticated problems and not accelerate through to new content. We teach using the concrete, pictorial and abstract approach:

Concrete – children have the opportunity to use concrete objects and manipulatives to help them understand what they are doing.

Pictorial – children then build on this concrete approach by using pictorial representations. These representations can then be used to reason and solve problems.

Abstract – with the foundations firmly laid, children move to an abstract approach using numbers and key concepts with confidence.

All classrooms have concrete resources that are used in the teaching of Mathematics and this is strongly encouraged at all ages and abilities.

During our daily lessons we encourage children to count aloud, practice fluency, problem solving and reasoning skills and ask mathematical questions. We develop their ability to independently select and use appropriate concrete apparatus to support their conceptual understanding and build procedural fluency. They have the opportunity to independently access and use a range of resources to support their work. We develop the children’s ability to represent problems using visualisation skills, including jottings and pictorial representations. Children are given plenty of opportunities within sessions to use and apply the mathematical skills and concepts they have learned.

ICT is used in Mathematics lessons for modelling ideas and methods. Wherever possible, we provide meaningful contexts and encourage the children to apply their learning to everyday situations. Although Mathematics is best taught discretely, it has many cross-curricular links. Teachers use opportunities in other subjects to rehearse skills in a context.

All classrooms have a display area specifically for Mathematics. This is called a working wall and displays items that children need to support and develop the unit's learning, for example, key vocabulary, success criteria, models, key questions. In the Early Years Foundation Stage there are also specific mathematical areas for children to access in their everyday learning.

Impact

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Summative assessment of child discussions about their learning.
• Images of the children’s practical learning.
• Interviewing the children about their learning (child voice).
• Moderation staff meetings where children’s books are reviewed and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Marking of written work in books (by the children in green pen when applicable).
• Termly formative assessment results (tracked through Target Tracker)
• External moderation of children’s work at the end of each Key Stage.
• Formal reporting of standards at the end of each Key Stage.