Maths
At Stilton C of E Primary Academy, we are committed to ensuring that all children are mathematically proficient and confident in the use of maths in their everyday lives. As such we teach for Maths Mastery, designed to ensure all children develop a deep, secure and sustainable understanding of age appropriate mathematical concepts, which can be built upon in the future. We understand that teaching that focuses on developing secure and deep understanding, including the use of practical resources and representations, supports the learning and memorisation of mathematical concepts. We know and believe that all learners can succeed in Maths and support our children to understand that making mistakes is an essential part of learning.
We understand that children need regular opportunities to revisit previous learning in order to commit mathematical understanding to the long term memory. As a result, at Stilton C of E Primary Academy, we follow the progressive curriculum suggested by CanDoMaths to ensure that children have regular opportunities to revisit and recall prior learning alongside acquiring new mathematical skills and knowledge through fluency, problem solving and reasoning whilst ensuring all children develop a CanDo attitude to maths.
- Fluency is the first step in becoming a successful mathematician. The National Curriculum states that pupils will: become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. In short, pupils should have a secure understanding of mathematical facts to apply to their learning. Contrary to popular belief, fluency in maths is not all about number – there are many more areas of maths which contain facts for children to retain and recall rapidly (for example, having a secure understanding of the properties of shapes). Children have access to a variety of online platforms to develop their fluency: Times Tables Rock Stars, Purple Mash and Maths.co.uk.
- Reasoning in maths is the application of logical thinking to make sense of an idea: it enables children to make use of all their other mathematical sense. Justifying and explaining ideas are important aspects of maths.
- Problem solving requires children to think strategically, deciding which steps to take to solve a problem. However, mathematical problems can be presented in a range of ways, not just through wording, and during maths lessons, children develop the strategies to be able to understand problems, decide on a starting point, decide the existing skills they have which they will need to use to solve it, and how to represent their calculations.
