Mathematics
What we believe:
Mathematics is important in everyday life. It is integral to all aspects of life and with this in mind at Hayton C of E Primary School, we endeavour to ensure that children develop a positive and enthusiastic attitude towards mathematics that will stay with them beyond their time at our school. The school has developed a mastery approach to Mathematics using resources from White Rose Maths Hub to support teachers in delivering this approach. Hayton Primary School is part of the North Maths Hub Mastery workgroup. This gives the school the opportunity to receive support from a mastery specialist teacher as well as the opportunity to share good practice with other schools in the workgroup. We are also, this year, taking part in the NCTEM's 'securing number' project in Early Years and Key stage 1 - again, another exciting opportunity for us to extend and challenge our teaching practice.
Mathematics equips pupils with the uniquely powerful set of tools to understand and change the world. These tools include logical reasoning, problem solving skills and the ability to think in abstract ways. Mathematics is important in everyday life. It is integral to all aspects of life and with this in mind at Hayton C of E Primary School we endeavour to ensure that children develop a positive and enthusiastic attitude towards mathematics that will stay with them beyond their time at our school. Mathematical skills and knowledge should be delivered, explored and revisited through conscious decision making and awareness of learning and progress needs and abilities. Children should develop resilience and self-confidence in applying their learning skills.
How do we do it?
As part of the mastery approach, a positive teacher mind-set and strong subject knowledge are key to student success in Mathematics. The school is committed to providing a purposeful and empowering Mathematics curriculum. It is not the case that some pupils can do Mathematics and others cannot; no pupil should be left behind and the focus is keeping up over catching up. By making high expectations clear and emphasising the value of Mathematics education, pupils are encouraged to build confidence, resilience and aspire to achieve. Abilities are neither fixed nor innate, but can be developed through practice, support, dedication and hard work. Natural talent is just a starting point and does not determine who has more or less potential to achieve. This way, pupils at the school are broadening their horizons with a Mathematics curriculum that fully prepares learners for their next steps in their school career and opens doors to understanding their place and the place of Mathematics in the wider world, regardless of a child’s background and ability.
A positive teacher mind-set in Mathematics encourages a love of learning and resilience that enables everyone to achieve. We are committed to ensuring that all pupils are given the opportunity to achieve mastery in the key concepts of Mathematics, appropriate for their age group, in order that they make genuine progress and avoid gaps in their understanding that provide barriers to learning as they move through education. Assessment for Learning, an emphasis on investigation, cross curricular Mathematics, problem solving and the development of Mathematical thinking and a rigorous approach to the development of teacher subject knowledge, are therefore essential components of our approach to this subject.
Our Mathematics curriculum is diligently sequenced to ensure that knowledge gained is cumulative; this aids apt progression as well as frequently providing pupils with the opportunity to draw on knowledge from previous year groups through our bespoke spaced retrieval strategies. Through this, our pupils understand the importance of the knowledge they gain through their Mathematics lessons while at Hayton and how it can be transferred to all areas of the curriculum. Providing pupils with these opportunities to put it into practice what they have learnt, we aim to ensure they are not only secondary school ready but can apply what they’ve learnt from primary school to their future career paths.
Subject Aims
Mathematics is important in everyday life. It is integral to all aspects of life and with this in mind, at Hayton, we endeavour to ensure that children develop a positive and enthusiastic attitude towards Mathematics that will stay with them throughout their lives. It is vital that a positive attitude towards Mathematics is encouraged amongst all of our pupils in order to foster confidence and achievement in a skill that is essential in our society.
We aim to provide pupils with a Mathematics curriculum and high-quality teaching to produce individuals who are numerate, creative, independent, inquisitive, enquiring and confident. We also aim to provide a stimulating environment through the use of real-life contexts and adequate resources so that pupils can develop their Mathematical skills to the full.
Subject Content
Our pupils should:
- Have a well-developed sense of the size of a number and where it fits into the number system.
- Know by heart, age appropriate number facts such as number bonds, multiplication tables, doubles and halves.
- Use what they know by heart, to figure out numbers mentally.
- Calculate accurately and efficiently, both mentally and in writing and paper, drawing on a range of calculation strategies.
- Recognise when it is appropriate to use a calculator and be able to do so effectively.
- Make sense of number problems, including non-routine/’real’ problems and identify the operations needed to solve them.
- Explain their methods and reasoning, using correct mathematical terms.
- Judge whether their answers are reasonable and have strategies for checking them where necessary.
- Suggest suitable units for measuring and make sensible estimates of measurements.
- Explain and make predictions from the numbers in graphs, diagrams, charts and tables.
- Develop spatial awareness and an understanding of the properties of 2d and 3d shapes.
When planning for objective coverage, teachers are expected to take the following mastery strategies into account:
- Small steps.
- Implementing the Concrete, Pictorial and Abstract (CPA) approach to introducing, exploring and applying mathematical concepts.
- Consider the use of variation when constructing independent tasks to allow opportunities for reasoning even with fluency work.
- Considering key questions and mathematical vocabulary at the point of unit planning.
- Multiple opportunities for verbal and written/drawn reasoning (explaining and using mathematical vocabulary to explain methods or reasoning) within unit exploration.
- Inclusion of relevant problem-solving opportunities, where children are expected to draw on and apply multiple concepts to address or approach a challenge.
- Modelling of all skills and approaches.
- Modelling and sharing of efficient and accurate application of methods as well as good ‘bad’ examples to encourage children to understand and explain why the answer or method did not work or cannot be correct.
- Opportunities to explore maths concepts/objectives at ‘greater depth’ .
- Include all learners, providing relevant support for those with additional needs (educational, medical or otherwise).
How do we know if we have had an impact?
The exploration of Mathematics at Hayton is interactive and engaging, with content made relevant to children’s real-world experiences and contextualised thus to support consolidation and retainment of knowledge and skill.
Children approach mathematical study with confidence and enthusiasm, and view tasks and challenges that call for application of varied knowledge across units of work and the selection of multiple skills with self-assuredly and a willingness to collaborate. Approach and response to reasoning activities will improve term on term, with the expectation that by the end of the year, children are happy to accurately define and use mathematical vocabulary introduced by their teacher, as well as complete stem sentences to complete mathematical statements or reasoning. Teaching and support staff should also see this period of implementation as an opportunity to highlight and further improve concepts that are received well and have clear impact on progress and learning, while also analysing and evaluating practice that needs to be addressed, reviewed or replaced.
Children leave Hayton C of E Primary School as literate and numerate individuals who have the skillset necessary in order to thrive at secondary school and beyond. We see this through talking with our children about their learning and what they can remember; we see this through the links our children make across subjects and years groups when they talk speak about their understanding of a concept; we see this in our pupils’ wonderful work; we see this through the outstanding progress they make from their starting points with us and through their statutory assessment scores at the end of each key stage.
Children leave Hayton with the confidence to try new things and make mistakes. Our bespoke Mathematics curriculum has been designed to get the best out of each and every learner. Children are resilient, hardworking and driven. They have been taught how to converse respectfully; how to value the responses offered by peers by celebrating ideas that aren’t their own, and how to politely disagree, offering their own thoughts and ideas. They stretch their own thinking by asking questions of both their peers and themselves.
How We Teach Maths At Hayton
‘Stretch and Challenge’ for more-able mathematicians
In our school we ensure challenge and stretch for more able children in several ways:
1. Depth Over Speed
- Encouraging Deeper Understanding: More able children are challenged to explore mathematical concepts in greater depth. For example, rather than moving quickly to new topics, they might explore multiple methods to solve the same problem or explain why a particular method works.
- Rich Questions: Teachers use probing questions to deepen understanding, such as "Can you find another way to solve this?" or "Why does this rule work in this situation?"
2. Problem-Solving Opportunities
- Complex Problems: Maths Mastery emphasizes reasoning and problem-solving. More able children can work on multi-step problems, open-ended challenges, and real-life applications that require higher-order thinking.
- Investigations: They may undertake mathematical investigations that require them to make predictions, identify patterns, and generalize rules.
3. Variation in Practice
- Intelligent Practice: Instead of repetitive, identical tasks, practice involves variations that require pupils to adapt and apply their understanding in different contexts, providing a challenge even within familiar topics.
- Connections Between Concepts: More able children are encouraged to see links between different areas of mathematics, such as how fractions relate to decimals or geometry to algebra.
4. Use of Mathematical Reasoning
- Explaining and Justifying: More able pupils are stretched by having to justify their answers, explain their reasoning, and prove or disprove statements. This deepens their understanding and develops their communication skills.
- Generalizations: They are encouraged to spot patterns and formulate their own rules or generalizations from given data or situations.
5. Differentiation Through Enrichment
- Challenge Activities: While all children work on the same core content, more able students might be given extension tasks that require deeper application of concepts.
- No Ceiling on Achievement: By removing fixed ability groups and allowing all children access to challenging work, more able students naturally rise to advanced levels of problem-solving and reasoning.
6. Encouragement of Metacognition
- Reflecting on Thinking: Maths Mastery promotes metacognitive skills, where students think about their own learning process. More able students can evaluate strategies, optimize problem-solving methods, and identify areas for improvement.
7. Collaborative Learning
- Explaining to Peers: More able children benefit from explaining concepts to others in mixed-ability groups. This reinforces their understanding and helps them develop new insights.
By focusing on understanding and application rather than acceleration, Maths Mastery ensures that more able children remain engaged and challenged, helping them to develop a love for learning and a strong foundation for future mathematics study.
For example:
Target Numbers
- "Using the numbers 123, 258, and 89, create addition and subtraction problems that give an answer closest to 500."
- Challenge: Find all possible combinations or justify why a particular combination is closest.
Missing Numbers
- "A subtraction calculation has the answer 245. The tens digit of the starting number is missing. What could the starting number and subtraction number be?"
- Example:
- *5* − 3*2 = 245
- Challenge: Find as many solutions as possible and explain the patterns in your answers.
Real Life
"You have £532 in your savings. You spend £147 on a bike and £86 on accessories. How much money do you have left?
- Challenge: If you save £25 a month after this, how many months will it take to have £500 again?"
Number Investigation
- "I subtract one three-digit number from another, and the answer is a multiple of 5. What could the numbers be?
- Challenge: Find as many solutions as you can and explain how you know you've found them all."
How to support your child at home with Mathematics:
Below are a range of resources which you may find useful in supporting your child at home with mathematics, giving you additional information about the methods we use to teach mathematics and also some home learning booklets which link to your children's learning in school.
A note of warning - sometimes we do not teaching following the exact units therefore the home booklets may not be in the correct order of OUR teaching.
Another note - the Maths Mastery approach means ensuring the DEPTH of mathematical knowledge, therefore please DO NOT give you child work above their year group as this will be counter-productive. Thank you
Please click HERE to link to Times Tables Rock Stars
Please click HERE to link to Mathletics
'Maths with Michael' is a range of 'how to' videos as to how you can support your child with maths at home. Each video links with the 'Help Guides' below.
In conjunction with the Mathematical Association, we now use the 'First Maths Challenges' and 'Primary Maths Challenges' to further stretch and challenge our young mathematicians.
Please see below for past papers, if you are interested. Each paper is timed at 45 minutes.
N RICH
N RICH is a really useful website to further support your child's mathematical thinking. Their resources are free of charge and are designed to nurture curious, resourceful and confident learners of school mathematics. They are based in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.