Intent: at Holy Trinity & S. Silas, we want our pupils to develop into confident, resilient and creative mathematicians. Fluent recall of key number facts is vital, but we also encourage children to apply this knowledge creatively to solve mathematical problems, and we also challenge them to explain their reasoning. It is our intention that HTSS children:

  • Enjoy maths
  • Leave feeling confident in key knowledge and skills
  • Have fluent recall of key number facts
  • Apply their knowledge creatively to solve mathematical problems
  • Feel able to explain their mathematical reasoning
  • Feel confident asking and investigating mathematical questions

Our maths curriculum supports children to be:

Caring citizens (care):

  • Show care to themselves by taking risks in maths and allowing themselves to make mistakes.
  • Respect each other’s ideas and support each other to work together.
  • Appreciate the importance of mathematical literacy among members of a functioning society.
  • Appreciate the value of using concrete equipment across key stages, encouraging independence and an awareness and understanding for those who work in different ways.
  • Make links between maths and other school subjects, their lives outside of school and the world around them.

Courageous communicators (courage):

  • Be curious about mathematical ideas and problems, ask their own questions and pursue their own ideas.
  • Take risks within their own learning.
  • Be confident in communicating mathematical thinking with others, using precise mathematical vocabulary.
  • Be able to communicate their mathematical understanding in a range of ways, including concrete representations, pictorial representations and more abstract calculations.
  • Challenge ideas, spot patterns and make generalisations.
  • Analyse their own work, reflect upon mistakes or misconceptions and learn how to improve their reasoning.
  • Try a range of strategies to help solve problems.
  • Develop their fluency through the over-learning of key number facts through the use of sentence stems, choral chanting, singing, memorisation games and repetition.
  • Recognise and discuss how their new learning builds upon their prior learning, noticing connections between current and prior maths learning.

Cooperative learners (cooperation):

  • Build upon on other people’s mathematical ideas.
  • Share their ideas with each other and understand the importance of this in developing and strengthening ideas.
  • Share their mathematical thinking (including mistakes) and understand that it helps improve our collective understanding of mathematics.
  • Undertake group problem-solving tasks and take on different roles where needed.  

Implementation:

In Reception, we follow the Mastering Number programme, designed by the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics. This focuses in depth on the foundational knowledge that children need to secure by the end of Reception, such as a deep understanding of numbers to ten – how they can be represented and ordered, and how they are related to each other through addition and subtraction. You can find out more about Mastering Number in Reception here: https://vimeo.com/700756760

In Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, we follow the schemes of work designed by White Rose Maths. These carefully designed schemes of learning ensure that children build up their mathematical understanding step-by-step, with frequent reminders of prior learning giving children a firm foundation on which they can build more complex mathematical thinking. Using the same schemes and workbooks throughout KS1 and KS2 ensures that children are consistently seeing and using the same diagrams and models of mathematical concepts. Our children explore mathematical ideas using physical resources and pictorial representations before finally moving to the abstract (such as written equations).

To see an overview of our maths curriculum for each year group, including videos to give you a flavour of how maths is taught, please go to the White Rose website. Click here for Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6.

To see how we represent calculations, you can look at the addition/subtraction calculation policy here and the multiplication/division calculation policy here.

If you would like some ideas of high-quality maths games, activities and challenges for children to try at home, explore the excellent Nrich website at https://nrich.maths.org/parents/primary

For additional information about our curriculum, you are welcome to come in and arrange a meeting with your child’s class teacher.  Parents of prospective pupils can arrange to speak to Mrs Goll or Mr McIntyre.