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Within the Romero Catholic Academy, our intent is to deliver the opportunities and experiences to ensure that every child has a rich, and meaningful relationship with their mathematical learning. We believe that Teaching for Mastery, provides our children with the best chance of developing this relationship and mastering maths by acquiring a deep, long-term, secure, and adaptable understanding of the subject which they can use as they grow.
By providing children with a range of vocabulary, strategies, and resources, we will encourage them to reason and explain their own thinking whilst enabling them to understand that making mistakes is a necessary step in learning. We will provide appropriate challenge and support whilst building on previous knowledge and skills both within maths and across the curriculum.
A structured curriculum has been mapped out in small carefully sequenced steps, across EYFS, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. It is delivered through quality first teaching supported by high-quality curriculum materials including but not limited to NCTEM materials. Staff receive effective, high quality CPD through Specialist Knowledge for Teaching Mathematics programmes and Primary Work Groups run by the Origin Maths Hub.
Learning is structured with great care to build deep conceptual knowledge alongside developing procedural fluency. The focus is on the development of deep structural knowledge and the ability to make connections.
Lessons are crafted with care, drawing on evidence from observations and assessments of pupils in class. Lessons include a variety of concrete and pictorial representations needed to introduce and explore a concept effectively.
Pupils work on the same tasks and engage in common discussions. Concepts are explored together to make mathematical relationships explicit and strengthen pupils’ understanding of mathematical connectivity. Precise questioning during lessons ensures that pupils develop fluent technical proficiency and think deeply about the underpinning mathematical concepts.
Children are encouraged and expected to use the correct vocabulary. Stem sentences are used to support explanations.
There is no differentiation in content taught, but the questioning and scaffolding individual pupils receive in class as they work through problems will differ, with higher attainers challenged through more demanding problems which deepen their knowledge of the same content.
Explicit learning of key facts including multiplication tables is important in the journey towards fluency and contributes to quick and efficient mental calculation. Practice leads to other number facts becoming second nature. All tasks are chosen and sequenced carefully, offering appropriate variation to reveal the underlying mathematical structure to pupils.
In KS1 and KS2 we have chosen to use Maths No problem textbooks endorsed by the DfE. EYFS and KS1 also access Mastering Number to develop fluency skills.
Children in EYFS will access their maths learning through continuous provision. Mathematical concepts are introduced using white rose and mastering number, and built upon through a series of direct teaching sessions. Within the provision, children have the freedom to further explore these mathematical concepts through concrete resources and creative opportunities.
Each classroom has a range of mathematical resources made available for children to self-select. These include, but are not limited to, Numicon, Base 10, place value counters, Bead string, number lines and hundred squares. Products such as Numberblocks (EYFS) and Tackling Tables (Y2-6) are used to support understanding and fluency.
Some children with SEND receive a tailored programme of maths teaching to support their specific needs.
The impact of Teaching for Mastery is that children can make connections in mathematics which deepens their knowledge of concepts and procedures, ensures what is learnt is sustained over time, and cuts down the time required to assimilate and master later concepts and techniques.
The structure of the lessons ensures that children’s difficulties and misconceptions are identified through immediate formative assessment and addressed with rapid intervention.
Teachers use their observations and formative assessments to influence their planning and ensure they are providing a mathematics curriculum that will allow all children to progress.
The teaching of maths is monitored on a termly basis using a variety of tools such as pupil voice, professional conversations and learning walks. Each term children from Year 1 to Year 6 complete a summative assessment to be used in conjunction with the teacher’s own knowledge and formative assessments to determine the children’s progress and attainment and identify next steps.
By the end of KS2 we aim for children to be fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics with a conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. They should have the skills to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of situations with increasing sophistication, including in unfamiliar contexts and to model real-life scenarios.
Children will be able to reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry and develop and present a justification, argument or proof using mathematical language. Children will also recognise the importance of Mathematics as a facilitating subject to enable them to access other areas of learning and operate successfully is everyday life both now and in the future.
