Maths at Shakespeare Infant School

Intent

At Shakespeare Infant School we are proud to provide an ambitious, broad and connected maths curriculum from Reception through to Year Two that covers all the content of the National Curriculum. We provide opportunities for our children to develop a love of maths and a curiosity to learn more about maths as they grow. As they move through the school they are given plenty of opportunity to explore maths through creative, practical and fun learning opportunities that are accessible to all of our children. All of our learning is carefully and sequentially planned and tailored towards each child’s needs. Our inclusive curriculum means that all children will as much as possible work on the same topic within a lesson using the CPA (concrete, pictorial, abstract) approach to teaching. We use our learning values of thinking, creativity, collaboration and independence to introduce and learn about different maths areas and strategies.

We aim to give our pupils a solid foundation of knowledge and interest in maths that will equip them to succeed in future education and beyond and be able to positively contribute to our society.

Implementation

We use a mastery approach to teaching maths, meaning pupils acquire a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject. We aim to provide children with time in each topic to help them gain a deeper understanding and make connections. We spend time teaching the fundamentals of maths, e.g. number and place value, in a step-by-step way to allow children to consolidate and deepen their understanding. We revisit topics through each school year, and from one year group to the next to reinforce the learning. We believe this will help children develop their understanding of maths on their journey to mastery.

We believe that when a child is showing mastery of a topic they will be able to:

• Describe in their own words
• Represent it in different ways
• Explain it to someone else
• Make up some of their own examples
• See connections with other facts and ideas
• Recognise it in new situations
• Make use of it in different ways

We tackle any misconceptions as they arise by revisiting frequently, pre teaching and a “Keep up not Catch up “intervention policy.

To support our CPA approach to learning we have a rich supply of manipulatives such as 10’s frames, deinnes, numicon, counters and bead strings. These are carefully chosen to support each topic in order for all children to be able to ‘do’ the maths, before recording it. This supports inclusivity as children are always able to access the learning at their own level. We ensure plenty of practical maths is included in our timetable and get outside as much as we can to allow children to learn in different contexts, have memorable experiences and really enjoy their maths. We learn our maths in different ways, sometimes working in groups to promote collaboration, sometimes working independently.

To develop all our children into mathematical thinkers we regularly ask the children to problem solve and think about mathematical questions that have more than one answer to promote creativity. We provide our children with the mathematical language skills, both orally and on our maths displays, so they can discuss the maths they are doing and can be supported in taking their ideas further. The adults in class use a set of school wide ‘key questions’ to develop and deepen each child’s understanding of the key concepts in maths.