Numeracy

Intent

It is our intention that:

• At Dame Dorothy Primary School, we foster positive can-do attitudes and we promote the fact that ‘We can all do maths!’ We believe all children can achieve in mathematics, and teach for secure and deep understanding of mathematical concepts through manageable small steps.
• Teaching is underpinned by methodical curriculum design and supported by carefully crafted lessons and resources to foster deep conceptual and procedural knowledge.
• Practice and consolidation play a central role. Carefully designed conceptual and procedural variation within this builds fluency and understanding of underlying mathematical concepts.
• Teachers use precise questioning in class to test conceptual and procedural knowledge, and assess pupils regularly to identify those requiring intervention so that all pupils keep up.

The intention of these approaches is to provide all children with full access to the curriculum, enabling them to achieve confidence and competence – ‘mastery’ – in mathematics, rather than many failing to develop the maths skills they need for the future.

Implementation

Dame Dorothy Primary School adopts the Mastery approach to the teaching of mathematics. Teachers reinforce an expectation that all pupils are capable of achieving high standards in mathematics. School follows the White Rose maths programme with a structured block approach to the teaching of mathematical concepts. The progression across year groups is clear.

The large majority of pupil’s progress through the curriculum content at the same pace. Differentiation is achieved by emphasising deep knowledge and through individual support and intervention. Class teachers ensure a tailored curriculum is planned for those children with SEND who are working more than two years behind their peers.

Our focus is to:

• Break learning down into small steps and then draw together in the form of conclusions and mathematical generalities
• Ensure pupils who grasp concepts rapidly are challenged through rich and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content. Those pupils who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on
• Explore how answers to questions are arrived at more than what the answers are
• To use precise mathematical language, and expect children to do likewise
• Explore different methods of tackling calculations and questions
• Encourage children to explain and discuss their methods and to identify the most efficient strategies
• Develop fluency in times tables and number
• Use mistakes and misconceptions as an essential part of learning and provide challenge through rich and sophisticated problems.
• Select and employ effectively the use of mathematical representations to enable pupils to uncover and access the underlying structure of the mathematics 

Impact

By the end of KS2 we aim for children to be fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics with a conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. They should have the skills to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of situations with increasing sophistication, including in unfamiliar contexts and to model real-life scenarios. Children will be able to reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry and develop and present a justification, argument or proof using mathematical language.