Mathematics

Intent - What Do We Aspire for Our Children?

Our Curriculum Intent for Mathematics

At Cuddington, all children are entitled to access all aspects of the curriculum, enabling them to achieve confidence and competence in mathematics. The fundamental idea is that all children develop a deep understanding of the mathematics they are learning. This is central to the planning and provision of mathematics at Cuddington. Learning is carefully sequenced, taking into account what has been taught before, and what knowledge and skills are needed for the next stage of our children’s mathematical development. Mathematics is purposefully planned to be taught explicitly across the wider curriculum in subjects such as (but not limited to) science, history and geography. 

Three key aims rest at the heart of our mathematics curriculum:

1. For children to be fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics,

2. For children to reason mathematically, 

3. For children to solve routine and non-routine problems with increasing independence. 

By achieving these aims, our children will leave Year 6 as knowledgeable, skilful and confident mathematicians ready for the next phase of their learning. 

Implementation - How Will We Deliver the Curriculum?

The majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace.... Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly should be challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content. Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material should consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on (NC, 2014, p.3).

Key Features of Our Approach:

• The large majority of pupils progress through the curriculum content at the same pace. 

• Teachers reinforce an expectation that all pupils are capable of achieving high standards in mathematics. 

• Pupils are taught through whole-class teaching, where the focus is on all pupils working together on the same lesson content at the same time. 

• Teaching is underpinned by a small-steps curriculum design philosophy and supported by carefully crafted lessons and curated resources to foster deep conceptual and procedural knowledge. 

• Differentiation is achieved by emphasising deep knowledge and/or through individual support and intervention. 

• If a pupil fails to grasp a concept or procedure, this is identified within the lesson structure and timely intervention ensures the pupil is best placed to move forward. 

• Key facts such as multiplication tables and addition facts within 10 are retained throuh retrieval practice to develop automaticity; this avoids cognitive overload in the working memory and enables pupils to focus on new concepts.

High Quality Resources

 White Rose premium resoucres are used to support the implementation of our curriculum. However, to ensure that children have an enriching mathematics curriculum, teachers carefully select other resources to support their teaching. Through the use of these we ensure:

• Teachers introduce new concepts in a logical sequence.

• Concepts are taught through high quality mathematical models and images.

• Mathematical models are consistently used through school.

• Teachers are supported with their subject knowledge.

• Our calculations policy is consistently applied.

Linking Curriculum and Pedagogy

We have a researched informed approach to teaching mathematics and our curriculum is implemented through a mastery approach to teaching mathematics. Therefore, our school has adopted a lesson design philosophy that links closely to Rosenshine's 'Principles of Instruction.' At the foot of the page is a document outlining each part of a lesson and how it links to research informed practice. A large emphasis of our teaching and curriculum design is centred around ensuring children retain the concepts they have been taught. One of the ways we do this is by providing opportunities for daily retrieval practice. This is done through frequent, short burst, low stakes testing such as the White Rose 'Flashback 4' quizzes. These quizzes recap learning from the previous lesson, previous week, last term, and preceding year. 

Inclusion

At Cuddington, our curriculum is ambitious and has been designed to give all learners the mathematical knowledge and skills to succeed beyond the classroom. Our school strives to meet the needs of pupils with special educational needs (SEND), with disabilities or high need and we use a mastery approach that ensures all children are provided with the support and challenge that they need.

Linked to Rosenshine’s principles of instruction, our lesson design ensures that children’s knowledge is recapped through retrieval practice to embed learning in to their long-term memory and to provide a ‘thread’ from previously learnt material to new learning. Information is taught in small steps and models are provided alongside new information – utilising dual coding theory. Teacher’s utilise questioning to ensure that children have acquired the knowledge whilst identifying children who require further explicit instruction and practice.

Concrete manipulatives and pictorial representatives are available for all children to allow them to access new mathematical concepts and we encourage their use throughout our units of work.

Children with SEND

All children deserve a rich and challenging mathematical education and good teaching for pupils with SEND is good teaching for all (EEF, 2021). At Cuddington, we understand that some children may be working below or require support to allow them to prevent them from falling behind their peers, due to their learning needs. In order to support of children with SEND we:

1.Know our children – Promote positive relationships with all pupils, without exceptions

2.Know their needs – Understand individual pupil’s learning needs through regular assessment (retrieval) and planning and identify the gaps in their knowledge

3.High quality teaching – We develop a repertoire of strategies to support children linked to Rosenshine’s principles of instruction

4.Complement whole class with small group/intervention support – Children are identified through questioning, understanding and acquired knowledge and support has a more intense focus on a smaller number of learning goals. 

We use our knowledge of the children in our care to find the right starting point to build successful learning from. At times, the learning may be further back in their learning journey and may require previously learnt concepts to be retaught in order to build solid foundations to work on. Where gaps have been identified, some children will also require further interventions separate from the classroom and a small number of learning goals. Despite this, at Cuddington, we do not place a ‘glass-ceiling,’ on our children’s learning. At all times, we foster a love of learning amongst all children and a belief that they can aspire and achieve anything they put their minds to.

Impact - How Do We Know Our Mathematics Curriculum is Effective?

Pupil Voice

Each term, the views of children from across the school are sought to assess our children's enjoyment of mathematics. Pupil voice has been a significant factor in the policy choices our staff have made. For example, pupils from Key Stage 2 explained that they liked having lessons structured in a way that they gradually became increasingly independent. This then became part of our whole staff professional development cycle.

Assessment

 Through daily recapping, teachers are always formatively assessing children, enabling teachers to be responsive to our children's needs. Furthermore, our lesson design structure is shaped in a way that ensures misconceptions are identified during the lesson and immediately addressed at the point of learning. 

In December and June, each child from Y2,3,4,5 and 6 take NTS standardised tests (December) with National tests for Y2 and Y6 in May and Y3,4 and 5 taking Summer Term NTS standardised tests.

For further information regarding the mathematics curriculum, please contact Mr Hutchinson: hutchinson@cuddington.cheshire.sch.uk

Mathematics in the Early Years 

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