Opportunities to check for understanding are planned within every lesson to seek out misconceptions and to ensure teaching is responsive and reflects the individual needs of their class. Oracy is an important element of our maths curriculum, and language is at the heart of everything we do at Humberstone. Our focus on problem solving and reasoning in maths is strengthened and supported by a dialogic approach to teaching and learning and the continued development of children’s oracy skills throughout all stages of their school life. The vision for maths is therefore also achieved by implementing effective strategies for talk and discussion during maths lessons, allowing children to participate in purposeful discussions where children explain, probe and challenge. Sentence stems and supports for mathematical language are woven throughout lessons as a scaffold to support all learners to articulate their thoughts, ideas and thinking processes – reflecting the underlying principle of mastery that “the answer is only the beginning”.  

A key element of our vision for maths is that children are able to demonstrate a deep, meaningful understanding of the maths they learn, which is fully embedded and can be applied to real life contexts. This is achieved through a continued focus on the 5 Big Ideas of Mastery, including variation, representation, fluency, cohesion and mathematical thinking. Our curriculum provides many opportunities for children to see maths in a variety of different contexts and structures, providing children with a well-rounded understanding. Mathematical thinking and language is a key feature of the maths at Humberstone, and is underpinned in classrooms by the emphasis on oracy skills and children’s ability to articulate their ideas and thought processes. 

Children with additional needs and or SEND are taught within the classroom by skilled and knowledgeable class teachers. Scaffolds may include the resources that are ordinarily available for all children and specific resources and support identified for specific children. Expert teacher modelling, use of scaffolds, and manipulatives helps all children to access the curriculum. 

Cross curricular links are deliberately and thoughtfully planned into the curriculum to  help children  consolidate and embed their mathematical knowledge and build schema. For example, in Science, children review their learning on statistics by creating bar charts and line graphs to present their findings and using their knowledge of units of measure to take more precise and accurate readings. During their project on materials and their properties, In Science, year 5 review and apply their prior knowledge on data and statistics by creating their own line graphs to present their scientific findings to illustrate which materials are the best thermal insulators. In the Year 6 Geography Project on water sources, in the Spring Term children record levels of water contamination including the milligrams of TDS per litre and  use a range of line graphs, bar charts,  as well as their knowledge of volume and capacity to make meaningful analysis of their results.  The year 4 project on Romans draws on knowledge of roman numerals taught in maths in the Autumn Term, 

Daily skills and drills sessions provide an opportunity for  children to retrieve and review previously learned content and prompts children to retrieve knowledge from their long term memory/prevent gaps in learning. An important part of our curriculum is pupils learning the most important facts and concepts which is evident through the focus placed on children knowing their times tables so that they can recall these facts quickly and accurately and can apply this knowledge to other areas of the maths curriculum.

Impact

As a result of an effectively sequenced and well taught curriculum, mathematical concepts are well embedded by all children which is reflected in attainment which is consistently above the national average over time and demonstrates that children are well prepared and ready for the next stage of their education. 

Monitoring shows that a wide range of manipulatives are used in all classrooms to bridge the gap between concrete and abstract allowing all learners to access the curriculum. Challenge is evident through the mathematical vocabulary the children are expected to use, the explanations they are expected to provide as well as through the opportunities they have to apply their mathematical knowledge to solve problems. Pupil feedback demonstrates that children have a positive attitude to Maths and enjoy their lessons. Due to the emphasis placed on reviewing prior learning, children are able to talk about mathematical knowledge and skills  and what they have learnt over time. Evidence from regularly monitoring children’s maths books demonstrate high quality outcomes, curriculum fidelity in all year groups and evidence that children are becoming fluent in applying mathematical concepts.