Our Maths Intent
At Kippax Greenfield, we teach the National Curriculum for mathematics following a mastery approach. In line with our vision of Growing Greatness at Greenfield, we want to foster a life-long love of maths and for our children to see the relevance to their lives and future aspirations. We provide regular opportunities for children to think in abstract ways through reasoning and problem solving.
Our children become independent, confident mathematicians, who are able to use their mathematical knowledge in a range of contexts. We ensure that children understand and retain mathematical knowledge through carefully sequenced lessons, so that each small step of learning builds on what the children already know. By making the connections explicit, we help children apply their understanding to rich and sophisticated problems. We use ambitious mathematical vocabulary so that our children can communicate their understanding. Our maths lessons are tailored to meet the needs of all learners, ensuring that learning is accessible yet challenging, leading to a sense of achievement for every child. We promote positive attitudes to mathematics by celebrating success and providing opportunities for exploration and discovery. We apply maths learning to the wider curriculum so that pupils appreciate its relevance.
Our "Great Greenfield Five" values underpin the mathematics curriculum
- Respect – this is essential for a productive and vibrant learning environment.
- Resilience – we teach a range of problem solving strategies, and provide opportunities for children to get stuck into rich and sophisticated tasks
- Responsibility – children take responsibility for their learning by marking their work, responding to feedback, and ensuring that their presentation meets high expectations.
- Collaboration – we make use of ambitious vocabulary and sentence stems, modelling mathematical discussion so that children can achieve even more by working together. We use an “I do, you do, we do,” approach to support the learning of new concepts.
- Aspiration – we show how mathematics is relevant to the world around us, and can help us to achieve our goals and dreams within the classroom and beyond.
The knowledge within the curriculum is categorised within the following areas
- Place value (the understanding of number)
- Number facts, such as number bonds and times tables
- Addition and subtraction
- Multiplication and division
- Fractions and percentages
- Measurement
- Geometry
- Statistics
A pre-assessment is carried out before each unit to ensure teaching is carefully tailored. Lessons then follow a consistent, 4-part structure. Each lesson begins with Retrieval, applying previous learning so that children are practising, remembering and recalling information and strategies. Next, we Explain the new learning, and Model how this is applied to a variety of situations. Children are then given the opportunity to Practise, so that skills and concepts become embedded. We use carefully selected sentence stems, concrete apparatus and visual models, choosing the necessary vocabulary and representations to support children’s understanding and facilitate problem solving.
Teachers continually assess the impact of the curriculum through observation, discussion, feedback in the classroom, from books, and formal tests. Same day intervention is used where appropriate: the teacher acts on assessment during the lesson to decide whether children need to extend their thinking, consolidate understanding or are in need of additional teaching. This is mainly done through whole class teaching in subsequent lessons. In some cases, an intervention may be are arranged to suit the needs of individual children.
Parents are informed of their child's progress in maths through informal discussions, parents’ evenings and an annual written report that identifies progress made and the next steps for improvement.
We teach maths for one hour every day, as well as 15-minute Mastering Number sessions in Key Stage 1 and fluency practice in Key Stage 2. We use the White Rose Maths Scheme of Learning to support our planning, teaching new content in 'small steps' so that all new learning builds gradually upon prior learning, helping children to commit knowledge to their long term memory. We also use Times Tables Rockstars as a home learning platform to support children in instant recall of their times tables facts.
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