Maths
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At Mount Pleasant, we strive to ensure all children see themselves as mathematicians and our mission is to:
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Ensure all children develop a positive attitude towards maths.
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Develop children’s resilience when faced with the unknown.
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Enable our pupils to really understand quantity and arrangement and how numbers can be composed and decomposed.
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Ensure pupils are fluent and automatic with fact recall for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts.
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Develop pupils’ ability to transfer these facts into a range of strategies – both mental and written.
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Ensure pupils make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems – we want our pupils to be problem-solvers.
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Encourage children’s curiosity, explore patterns and explain their reasoning through rich mathematical discussion with their peers.
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Challenge children to find a range of solutions and ultimately the most elegant or efficient way of solving a problem.
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Through a ‘Mastery Approach’ all children are challenged and have time to develop a deep understanding of a mathematical concept before moving onto new content. All children should have a deep and thorough understanding of number facts such as number bonds and times tables which should allow them to focus on tackling new concepts effectively. Challenge is something which is key to all children being successful in maths and this is central to our vision. Children are challenged in a variety of ways and are exposed to a wide variety of representations based on the same concept.
The movement towards achieving our vision is based on regular and robust assessment which gives clear indicators as to what progress children have made, the concepts children have mastered and what the next steps in their learning will be. Analysis of this assessment aids us in measuring the impact and quality of maths teaching and curriculum in school.
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Our Maths Lead, Mr Foulds, is also the Maths Lead for Lingfield Education Trust.
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Subject Leader: Mr Foulds
Curriculum
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At Mount Pleasant Primary School, our maths curriculum aims to ensure all pupils are fluent in both fact recall and mathematical content. We see it as vital that pupils understand the mathematical content of an area of maths before working on linked problems. Our lessons reflect this in that we have dedicated problem-solving lessons once fluency is secure. This approach allows us to ensure all pupils are fluent but it also ensures all pupils have the chance to become competent and resilient problem-solvers.
We understand that success in maths begins in EYFS and that it is all about quantity and arrangement. We encourage pupils to subitise before and alongside counting so that they develop a strong understanding of both how numbers are composed but also how they can be decomposed. Pattern and spatial awareness are also key parts of our maths teaching and curriculum in EYFS.
As a school, we know that this understanding of number gained in EYFS needs to translate into pupils becoming fluent in key addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts and to this end we use Number Sense in KS1and have put in place a fully planned curriculum for mental calculation strategies in KS2. Children in both key stages have daily fifteen minute lessons on this. Alongside this we have a dedicated program for teaching and assessing multiplication table facts in Years 1 to 4.
Our new maths learning (in our main maths lessons) is built around a block design where maths skills are fully mastered by all pupils. To ensure pupils understand mathematical content we work from concrete (where appropriate) through pictorial to abstract representations. We ensure pupils are fluent across a range of varied representations.
We view reasoning as being throughout maths and put a firm emphasis on discussion and oral rehearsal of reasoning before transferring it into written responses where appropriate.
Assessment
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Assessment is a key part of our approach to maths and we see it as fulfilling these roles:
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To assess what pupils know.
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To identify gaps in their knowledge.
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To assess the effectiveness of our maths curriculum.
We have a robust system of assessment whereby pupils complete low-stakes mini-assessments after each block of learning. These mini-assessments are linked to our whole-trust maths objectives include a ‘greater depth’ question to help us identify and monitor higher attainers.
Following an assessment lesson, we have a day where we ‘pause’ our curriculum and address gaps identified by the mini-assessments. During this pause lesson, higher attainers receive a dedicated greater depth lesson to ‘stretch’ their thinking.
Due to our assessment tracking tool, we can see if any areas of maths across year groups or the whole school need addressing and we can thus adapt our maths curriculum from this for the following year.
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