LHPS Mathematics Curriculum Design

Guiding Principles

We want our children to Appreciate, Aspire and Achieve. We are committed to providing a Mathematics Curriculum which is designed to teach the fundamentals of mathematics, through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems in order to develop mastery in Mathematics.  Children will develop conceptual understanding through representing and applying their mathematical knowledge rapidly and accurately in a range of different representations and structures. We aim to develop mathematicians, who can follow a line of enquiry through identifying relationships and making generalisations to reason and prove a concept using mathematical language.

Core Beliefs

Appreciate

Aspire

Achieve

A Mathematics  Curriculum that develops every child’s ability to appreciate, care, respect and understand themselves, others and the world in which they live. A curriculum that also ensures that every child feels valued and cared for.

A Mathematics Curriculum that provides a range of opportunities, designed to empower every child to ‘dream big’ and develop a sense of what is possible for them to achieve now and in their future lives.

A Mathematics  Curriculum that ensures all children have the skills, knowledge, attitude and social understanding to achieve in all aspects of their lives and equip them to become active and engaged citizens.

Curriculum

Approach

Our mastery approach to lesson design is based upon our strong knowledge of pedagogy and our understanding of our children’s needs. This ensures that each lesson maximises both learning and our core beliefs of Appreciate, Aspire and Achieve.

Our aim is for all children to develop a mathematical curiosity, providing them with a foundation for understanding the world.  This will enable the children to gain the necessary skills needed in life, giving them access to future learning.  We follow a carefully constructed teaching cycle throughout the school. The cycle consists of using the Maths No Problem Series, which is fully aligned with the National Curriculum.

Through a Maths Mastery approach the 5 Big Ideas of: representation and structure, mathematical thinking, fluency, variation, and coherence are succinctly planned for and delivered.

Mathematics is taught in mixed ability groups as we believe all children can achieve.  Using this approach, all children are exposed to some higher-level thinking questions and problem-solving as well as having the opportunity to collaborate and develop a growth mind-set through working with their peers. Differentiation is achieved by emphasising deep knowledge and through individual support and intervention.  Children are given opportunities and are taught to work both collaboratively and independently.

Teachers reinforce an expectation that all pupils are capable of achieving high standards in Mathematics.  All staff use questioning in class, to test conceptual and procedural knowledge and incorporate a reflective approach to each lesson, to evaluate learning and to plan next steps for all children.

Concrete and pictorial representations of Mathematics are chosen carefully to help build procedural and conceptual knowledge together. Exercises are structured to build deep conceptual knowledge alongside developing procedural fluency.

Children are encouraged to make connections across mathematical procedures and concepts to ensure fluency, mathematical reasoning, and competence in solving problems ensuring knowledge is sustained over time.

Carefully designed variation builds fluency and understanding of underlying mathematical concepts through practice and consolidation.

Children are encouraged to explain and justify their thinking when answering mathematical questions, with an emphasis on the children using precise mathematical vocabulary in the explanation of their thinking. 

We provide high quality professional development to ensure that we are always improving the standard of our teaching so that this impacts upon children’s learning. All our teachers have deep subject knowledge.

Parents are encouraged to support their child’s mathematical understanding through training sessions, one to one meetings with teachers and by volunteering in school.

Impact

Children’s knowledge, understanding and progress across all subject areas as well as their desire and ability to learn will be measured using a range of qualitative and quantitative strategies including: information from book scrutiny, performance data measured from starting point, lesson observations, drop ins, all stakeholder voice, collaborative research, use of external critical friends, and self / peer evaluation.

By the time a pupil leaves Lunt’s Heath Primary School in Year 6, they will have the essential knowledge to make sense of the world around them through developing their ability to calculate, reason, and solve problems. They will have an understanding of how Mathematics is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and be confident, curious and inquisitive young people.