Mathematics

At Huxley CE Primary we aim to ensure that children acquire a long-term, secure, adaptable understanding of mathematics. Our aim is to ensure pupils are secure in each element of mathematics before advancing onto the next. Due to the nature of our school offer, it is vital to ensure that the fundamental basics underpinning a good grasp of mathematics are embedded and secure before moving on.

Early Mathematics is crucial-these first few years of a child’s life are especially important for mathematics development. Research shows that early mathematical knowledge predicts later reading ability and general education and social progress. Conversely, children who start behind in mathematics tend to stay behind throughout their whole educational journey (Aubrey, Godfrey, Dahl, 2006).

In our school, we focus on promoting:

Small, coherent achievable steps throughout the lesson
Variation – a balance between conceptual and procedural understanding
Developing mathematical ‘agility’- seeing connections and links between learning
Fluency – application of efficient methods and flexibility in approach
Representation and Structure – use of a range of ways both to represent a concept or non-concept, and to expose structures

Strategies to achieve this-

Whole class/groups kept together
All children can succeed
Immediate on the spot intervention
Conceptual and procedural variation
Depth, not acceleration
Emphasis on the structure and connections (pattern spotting) within the maths
Concrete-pictorial-abstract
Talk partners
Rapid recall of facts

How do we teach mathematics at Huxley?

We use White Rose Maths to support our mathematics teaching and learning.

We want pupils to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, to be able to reason and to solve problems. Our curriculum embraces these National Curriculum aims, and provides guidance to help pupils to become:

Visualisers – we use the CPA approach to help pupils understand mathematics and to make connections between different representations.

Describers – we place great emphasis on mathematical language and questioning so pupils can discuss the mathematics they are doing, and so support them to take ideas further.

Experimenters – as well as being fluent mathematicians, we want pupils to love and learn more about mathematics.

To learn mathematics effectively, some things have to be learned before others, e.g. place value needs to be understood before working with addition and subtraction, addition needs to be learnt before looking at multiplication (as a model of repeated addition). For some other topics, the order isn’t as crucial, e.g. Shapes and Statistics need to come after number, but don’t depend on each other. We mix these so pupils have as wide a variety of mathematical experiences as possible in each term and year.

What is taught and when?

EYFS