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Wonder Primary Mathematics

Wonder Primary Mathematics
Curriculum taught at:

Our vision

We believe that it is vital for all our pupils to develop a deep understanding and confidence in maths. We aim to provide strong, secure learning and real progress for all children. Through our maths teaching we work to create assured, happy and resilient mathematicians who relish the challenge of maths.

We believe that all children should have exposure to high quality varied fluency, reasoning and problem-solving questions in all lessons, and that they develop the skills needed to approach such questions in creative ways. We want children to choose the most efficient strategies as well as think systematically. We also encourage them to ask questions, make relationships between number and recognise patterns. We hope children will become independent, reflective thinkers, whose skills not only liberate them in maths but also support them across the curriculum.

We want children to our schools with a love of maths and a positive mathematical mindset that will stay with them for life.

Mastery Children complete maths lessons, which follow the White Rose Maths scheme of learning. This scheme aims to develop mastery in maths, whilst ensuring complete coverage of the Primary National Curriculum for mathematics. The scheme provides a detailed, structured curriculum that is mapped out in small carefully sequenced steps, ensuring continuity and progression. It ensures that fundamental methods, facts and strategies are secure so that they can use familiar strategies to problem-solve and reason.
Resilience Lessons are carefully crafted to foster deep conceptual and procedural knowledge. Whole class discussions, partner talk, linking of facts and precise questioning during lessons ensures that pupils develop fluent technical proficiency and think deeply about the underpinning mathematical concepts. A variety of concrete and pictorial representations are used to introduce and explore a concept effectively before moving onto abstract representations. The precise use of and teaching of vocabulary is also present in lessons.
Numeracy Practise and consolidation play a central role of maths lessons. Carefully constructed exercises and problems enable all pupils to develop conceptual understanding alongside procedural fluency. Teachers use specific questioning to test conceptual and procedural knowledge and assess pupils regularly to identify those requiring interventions. This allows pupils’ difficulties and misconceptions to be identified and addressed through immediate formative assessment and rapid intervention - commonly through individual or small group support.

Our curriculum

Our key principles:

• Varied fluency, reasoning, and problem-solving are embedded within our mathematics curriculum.
• A mastery approach is followed wherein pupils are supported to understand through the use of concrete, pictorial and abstract representations.
• We believe that all pupils should be taught to approach new questions in creative ways with resilience and a growth mindset.
• We want pupils to celebrate their mistakes and see them as an integral part of their learning journey and they enter the classroom everyday with a ‘can do’ mentality.
We follow the White Rose long term plan to ensure coverage and progression of skills within and across year groups
• The national curriculum objectives are broken down into ‘small steps’ to check for understanding before moving on
• Tasks are provided for pupils to work on the skills for that lesson alongside appropriate concrete or pictorial resources which pupils can choose to use to support them in their learning
• SEND pupils predominantly cover the curriculum content of their year group. In cases where they are working significantly below their year group, they will learn at the correct level for their understanding but this will be matched closely with the overall objective for the whole class. Learning will be supported through the use of models, scaffolding, worked examples and concrete manipulatives. Formative and summative assessment will inform the core skills prioritised and gaps which may need to be addressed. Teacher and Teaching Assistant support will be ensured for these pupils.
• High prior attainers are challenged to explore their understanding in greater depth through investigations, reasoning, problem-solving and open-ended tasks which are designed to extend.

Our Teaching

We endeavour to teach lessons that are stimulating and interesting in addition to keeping a keen eye on the fact that many mental skills need hard work and regular practise. Across school children will practise their addition, subtraction, multiplication and division skills, by taking part in 4 operation quizzes and flash back 4 activities prior to the lesson input. To help children with their multiplication recall facts they complete a times tables quiz three times a week. Twice a week they are taught the timetable facts that they are learning.

Implementation

• Pupils being taught in single year groups within mixed ability classes.
• Opportunities for fluency practice in every lesson to encourage pupils to develop their mental strategies and explore the efficiency of different methods.
• Regular practise of the key concepts using mini-whiteboards so that the teacher can continuously assess and support understanding.
• Concrete manipulatives are accessible in every classroom and are available for pupils to use as directed or independently.
• During their learning journey from Year 3 – 6, pupils will develop their written calculation methods in alignment with the Calculation Policy, founded in principles of CPA progression.
• Opportunities for pupils to experience and practise reasoning and problem-solving skills in every lesson, either as a whole class, in pairs, groups or independently.
• Challenges are encouraged for pupils to delve deeper into their learning of key concepts.
• Pupils are exposed to mathematical vocabulary and are expected to use this when APE-ing their answers (answering, proving and explaining).
• Teachers and Teaching Assistants circulate classrooms and actively respond, challenge and support pupils with their learning.
• Working walls display key and prior learning to remind pupils of concepts, vocabulary and a variety of concrete, pictorial and abstract representations.
• Additional time, outside of the maths lesson, is given to teaching and learning multiplication and division facts through the Times Table Rock Stars programme, using both the paper and online formats.
• Pupils will recap and consolidate the four operations through daily Flashback 4 quizzes or ‘4 Operation’ quizzes which help pupils to rapidly recall key mathematical facts and procedures.
• Pupils enjoy maths lessons and are engaged.
• Outside of maths lessons, pupils have opportunities to apply the maths skills they have learnt in other subject areas, such as Science, allowing them to see how maths is connected to other curriculum areas and how it applies to them in the real world.

Monitoring of learning

• Live feedback during lessons – verbal and written
• End of Block White Rose assessments
• Termly NFER Assessments/Mock SATs papers for Year 6
• Pupil Progress Meetings
• Learning walks
• Subject leader and senior leadership monitoring
• Subject leader and senior leader data analysis and identification of areas of cous
• Pupil voice

Impact 

• Children confidently demonstrate fluency in their mathematics
• Children see their mistakes as learning opportunities and demonstrate a growth mindset
• Children are engaged in their mathematics learning and relish the opportunity to learn in lessons
• Children are able to understand and use mathematical vocabulary to support them in their reasoning ability
Useful Documents and Links