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Maths

Intent

At West Lane, maths is accessible to all and maximises children’s mathematical concepts, skills and thinking strategies to become a successful workforce of the future in our modern world. This is achieved through exploration, clarification, practice and application over time, and will help to develop our core curriculum skills of reasoning and problem solving. Through teaching this approach, we intend to help children make sense of the numbers, shapes and patterns that they see in the world around them, whilst providing opportunities to handle numbers and data in our increasingly digital world. Mathematics is not solely taught as a discreet subject, but mathematical skills will also be consolidated throughout the whole day. It is our intent that children develop their strong number sense so that as their confidence grows, they will be able to look for patterns, manipulate numbers to make calculations easier, work out calculations mentally, use logical reasoning, suggest solutions and enjoy investigating and exploring numbers. We intend to expose children to a wide range of concrete resources to support their mathematical understanding before modelling the use of pictorial representations. By having this strong foundation, children at West Lane then become confident in using abstract representations.

Implementation

We stimulate our children’s curiosity, foster their creativity and equip them with the skills that they will need in life beyond school by being enthusiastic about mathematics and through the clear modelling of our own thought process. As the required mathematical content becomes more challenging, we encourage and model resilience and determination, skills that we highly value. Lessons are carefully planned to ensure thorough coverage of the national curriculum content and to give children the time to delve deeply into each skill, following a mastery approach. We work collaboratively and share ideas to plan and deliver high quality, active lessons, which motivate and challenge the children and meet each individual need. Throughout the school day, relevant links will be made to real life and mathematics will be put into context. Teachers deliver one curriculum for all, following a mastery approach; additionally, in Upper Key Stage 2 classes are mixed to enable further stretch and challenge for our most able learners as well as additional support for those who find maths more difficult. Maths skills are incorporated across the curriculum, through other STEM subjects, and is delivered in a positive manner that incites children’s excitement and curiosity about the concepts being taught.

Impact

Children at West Lane develop the knowledge, skills and understanding to help them be a successful in our modern world. Children’s skills progress to enable them to not only have met the requirements of the National Curriculum but to also have a developed a good number sense where they enjoy exploring numbers and solving problems that are useful in real life contexts and the wider world. We see that a mathematical concept or skill has been mastered when a child can show it in multiple ways, using the mathematical language to explain their ideas, and can independently apply the concept to new problems in unfamiliar situations.

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