Mathematics | Chudleigh CE VC Community Primary School

Being a Mathematician

Mathematics Vision

At Chudleigh, we believe mathematics is a vital part of everyday life, underpinning science, technology, engineering, financial literacy, and many other careers. A high-quality maths education provides children with the foundations to understand the world around them, to think and reason logically, and to develop a genuine sense of curiosity and enjoyment. We aim for pupils to confidently use mathematical vocabulary to explain their thinking, ask thoughtful questions, and deepen their understanding. In essence, ‘doing’ is not enough. The importance of pupils being able to reason mathematically has been cited as a strong predictor for later mathematical achievement (Ching & Nunes, 2017). It is important to us that every child develops a secure and meaningful grasp of mathematical concepts without limits being placed on their potential. Central to our approach is the belief that all children can succeed in maths. We hope that pupils leave Chudleigh with both the ambition to continue learning throughout their lives and the skills needed to tackle more advanced mathematical ideas as they progress to secondary school and beyond.

At Chudleigh, we aspire for our children to be:

Curious in all aspects of life
Enjoy the state of not yet knowing the resolution

Ask their own questions
Spot patterns
Make conjectures
Make generalisations
Reflective and notice
Try to disprove ideas
Argue with their own thinking

Click here for the mathematical learning behaviours we encourage in our pupils.

Teaching for Mastery

Here at Chudleigh, we are implementing a mastery curriculum. We believe that the principles of a mastery curriculum enable us to achieve the aims of the 2014 National Curriculum.

We utilise the Oak National Academy Maths Curriculum to help build a coherent, mathematical journey for all our pupils. This curriculum aligns to the NCETM’s Curriculum Prioritisation Materials to help support this coherence.

Our curriculum mapping can be found here.

What does this look like in practice?

Underlying Principles

Mathematics teaching for mastery assumes everyone can learn and enjoy mathematics.
Mathematical learning behaviours are developed such that pupils focus and engage fully as learners who reason and seek to make connections.
Teachers continually develop their specialist knowledge for teaching mathematics, working collaboratively to refine and improve their teaching.
Curriculum design ensures a coherent and detailed sequence of essential content to support sustained progression over time.

Lesson Design

Lesson design links to prior learning to ensure all can access the new learning and identifies carefully sequenced steps in progression to build secure understanding.
Examples, representations and models are carefully selected to expose the structure of mathematical concepts and emphasise connections, enabling pupils to develop a deep knowledge of mathematics.
Procedural fluency and conceptual understanding are developed in tandem because each supports the development of the other.
It is recognised that practice is a vital part of learning, but the practice must be designed to both reinforce pupils’ procedural fluency and develop their conceptual understanding.

In the Classroom

Pupils are taught through whole-class interactive teaching, enabling all to master the concepts necessary for the next part of the curriculum sequence.
In a typical lesson, the teacher leads back-and-forth interaction, including questioning, short tasks, explanation, demonstration, and discussion, enabling pupils to think, reason and apply their knowledge to solve problems.
Use of precise mathematical language enables all pupils to communicate their reasoning and thinking effectively.
If a pupil fails to grasp a concept or procedure, this is identified quickly, and gaps in understanding are addressed systematically to prevent them falling behind.
Significant time is spent developing deep understanding of the key ideas that are needed to underpin future learning.
Key number facts are learnt to automaticity, and other key mathematical facts are learned deeply and practised regularly, to avoid cognitive overload in working memory and enable pupils to focus on new learning.

Assessment

Pupil understanding is assessed against the Ready to Progress Criteria, outlined by NCETM and DfE in Teaching Mathematics in Primary Schools (2020). We recognise that our curriculum is an ambitious curriculum for all, and therefore where pupils are keeping up with each step in learning, we assess these pupils as working at the expected standard.

As a result, all pupils should secure each of the Ready to Progress Criteria for their age group to be regarded as meeting the expected standard. To assess this, we utilise formative assessment to ensure pupils ‘keep up’ as well as end of term assessments to evidence security of concepts beyond recency.

Where pupils do not keep up with the learning, rapid intervention opportunities across the school are in place to enable the child to be ready for the next lesson.

Where pre-requisite or End of Block assessment identifies any gaps, teachers cater for this in their planning by either: planning a longer learning sequence to ensure pre-requisite understanding is secured. This supports all pupils to make connections between concepts.

SEND

It is ensured that SEND children have an ambitious curriculum. Where a SEND pupil is maintaining pace with the class’s learning journey, they would continue with appropriate in class support where necessary.

Should a child be significantly behind the class’s curriculum, small group work outside of the lesson may take place to allow the pupil to move on from their starting point. This teaching would take place by a highly trained teaching assistant where the focus would be aiming for the child to meet each year’s ‘ready to progress’ criteria.

Maths in the Early Years

Children’s understanding of number during preschool is consistently associated with their mathematical achievement in primary and secondary school. Mathematical achievement in turn is consistently found to be the strongest predictor of children’s overall school achievement and their success in entering the workforce.

(Early Intervention Foundation, 2018)

At Chudleigh, we recognise how important it is for pupils to secure deep, compositional understanding of numbers to 10 as well as spatial reasoning to secure long term mathematical achievement.

Our EYFS curriculum is based on the NCETM’s Mastering Number programme which provides a small steps approach to securing strong early number sense. Trajectories for shape, space and measure are mapped out in line with the NCETM’s hypothetical learning trajectories Early Years | NCETM.

You can find a copy of our EYFS curriculum here.

Calculation and Representation Guidance

We are continuing to develop our Calculation and Representation Guidance that teachers use as a guide to support them in allowing children to make sense of the mathematical concepts taught. This can also be a useful document for parents should they wish to support their child from home, ensuring consistency with how concepts are taught using representations that are familiar to the children.

There are 4 main strands covered with the guidance:

NPV - Number and Place Value

A-S - Addition and Subtraction

M-D - Multiplication and Division

F - Fractions