Our Maths Vision

At Shustoke Primary School, our Mathematics curriculum has been planned and developed to ensure every child can achieve excellence in Mathematics. We believe that the basic skills of Mathematics are vital for the life opportunities of our children. Our aim is for all of our pupils to be able to think mathematically, in a way which enables them to reason, solve problems and assess risks in a range of real life contexts.

We want children to experience a sense of awe and wonder as they solve a problem for the first time, discover different solutions and make links between different areas of Mathematics and with their prior learning. We aim to provide children with a deep understanding of the subject by offering a varied approach in our delivery of Mathematics, through a concrete, pictoral and abstract approach to solving Mathematical problems. This allows pupils to fully understand what they are learning and how they can apply it to a range of situations in the classroom and beyond. We want our children to leave our school as confident Mathematicians, with a broad understanding of how Maths can support them in their daily lives as they grow into the adults of the future.

Children feel both challenged and supported in Maths lessons, making use of expert instruction, while having the confidence to independently access a wide range of resources and learning scaffolds.

Most of all, we want children to feel an excitement about Maths. We want them to be engaged and enthusiastic learners, who see the real-life relevance of their learning, with the confidence to explore in a safe, supportive environment.

The National Curriculum

The national curriculum for mathematics aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including the varied and regular practice of increasingly complex problems over time.
• Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, understanding relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.
• Can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions

Mathematics is an interconnected subject in which pupils need to be able to move fluently between representations of mathematical ideas. The programmes of study are, by necessity, organised into apparently distinct domains, but pupils should make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems. They should also apply their mathematical knowledge to science and other subjects.

The expectation is that the majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace. However, decisions about when to progress should always be based on the security of pupils’ understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly should be challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content. Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material should consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on.

Maths Information