Maths

Intent

When teaching mathematics at Lyne and Longcross, we intend to provide a curriculum which caters for the needs of all individuals and sets them up with the necessary skills and knowledge for them to become successful in their future adventures. Mathematics is essential to everyday life. Our aim is to help children develop sound mathematical skills, including the ability to make connections, solve calculations, reason mathematically, work systematically and solve problems creatively. We want children to be confident and curious to try new ways of working and to recognise that they learn from making errors and mistakes. We build children’s fluency skills with the idea that their flexibility, recall and rote knowledge of number and arithmetic skills is fundamental for all other maths learning.

We incorporate sustained levels of challenge through varied and high quality activities with a focus on fluency, reasoning and problem solving. We aim for all pupils to be given the opportunity to explore maths in depth, using mathematical vocabulary to reason and explain their workings. A wide range of mathematical resources are used and pupils are taught to show their workings in a concrete, pictorial and abstract form wherever suitable. They are taught to explain their choice of methods and develop their mathematical reasoning skills. We encourage resilience, adaptability and acceptance that struggle is often a necessary step in learning. Our curriculum allows children to better make sense of the world around them relating the pattern between mathematics and everyday life.

Implementation 

At Lyne and Longcross, we have adapted the White Rose mastery scheme of work throughout the school which ensures that progression and expectations are high and in-line with National Curriculum expectations. These plans are used alongside other high quality maths resources, such as NCETM, to ensure adapted and engaging lessons are planned for. This approach requires children to experience and experiment with different methods and representations of number in order to develop secure understanding. In our Early Years environment, children have the opportunity to lead their own learning however, our teachers skilfully plan for exciting maths based activities that the children will be motivated by and choose to access for themselves.

Each year group follows the key sequence of place value and number, four arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) and fractions. Further topics such as measure and geometry are then scattered amongst these key topics to ensure context use of skills and varied questions are offered to children. Year 1 provide a contrast to this, as they start their year learning by looking at measure – introducing key vocabulary which is essential across their other maths topics. The planning and structure is edited and differentiated further by individual teachers, alongside the maths subject lead, to make sure that the cohort and all children’s needs are catered for. The adaptation of the teaching sequence is more significant in years two and six, as teachers adapt planning to ensure all key objectives are covered prior to the end of key stage assessment points.

It is required that our maths lessons follow a structure, beginning with an arithmetic task to begin, followed by recap of learning before introducing the aims of the lesson and key vocabulary; children’s work and evidence of their learning is then gathered in books. The short arithmetic recap session has the aim of revisiting a previously taught topic to ensure clarity of methods, fluency and accuracy. In the younger years this ensures good fluency of number skills, practice of mental approaches and an overall good foundation of number knowledge to support them as they advance through the school. As the children progress into KS2, this arithmetic recap uses this foundation to revisit and practice methods for the four operations and their times tables. These sessions are sequenced in each half term, each week and each lesson providing a clear structure for teachers to follow. Reception, year 1 and year 2 are beginning a mastering of early number scheme (from Sep ’23 – NCETM led) which provides a teaching structure for sessions.

As part of their maths learning, children also take part in a weekly 99 club to assess their progress with their times tables. When children progress in their 99 club, it is recorded in a document in the shared maths folder. Across the school, maths homework is set weekly, often through Mathletics.

Teachers evaluate the children’s maths learning against intended learning outcomes of planned activities and against end of year objectives and skills progression ensuring full coverage if the curriculum. Assessment is embedded within our practice so that future lessons can allow for suitable challenge or support is in place based on children's previous learning. We encourage variation in the high quality approaches teachers use to support or challenge pupils and alongside teaching assistance, this will look different every lesson depending on the children’s needs, maths topic, or progress in previous learning.

Helping with Maths at Home

Supporting with maths at home can be tricky as there are often different ways of reaching answers. The links below can support parents in understanding the methods children are taught in school. Our calculation policy can also assist in understanding the development of arithmetic skills in maths. If you would like further information, please do speak to your child's teacher who will be able to let you know exactly how tasks are completed in class.

We recommend regular fluency practice at home to help build children's flexibility with numbers. Below are some links for number bonds and times table practice websites which can also be downloaded as apps. 

We have led multiple maths workshops for parents which may assist you further. Previously we discussed the KS1 and KS2 curriculums discussing our CPA approach and arithmetic methods used in class.

The year, we held 'Homework help' workshops to assist parents with the methods we use in addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions.

You can access the slides below.

Look at our learning...

Parent Workshops - Jan '24 

We held three 'homework help workshops' to assist parents with arithmetic and fractions. We taught a range of skills including column addition/subtraction, long multiplication and finding a common denominator in fractions. You can find the slides above or on the parent workshop page. 

Mastering Early number, KS1 and EYFS - launched Sep '23

Our KS1 and reception classes have begun a new program of 'mastering early number'. The scheme is delivered by NCETM and introduces daily, 10 minute activities and input to develop children's fluency and basic number skills. Children are building familiarity with using Rekenrek and making connections with the make up of numbers. 

Parent workshops - April '23 

We invited our parents into school one evening in April to explore what maths looks like at Lyne. We discussed the importance of fluency, the CPA approach we use as well as arithmetic methods (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). We concluded by also sharing loads of ways to incorporate math at home and way parents an support their children. You can access the slides above or speak to teachers for further support. 

NSPCC Number Day - February '23

To raise money for the NSPCC, the whole school enjoyed an afternoon of fun, hands-on maths activities, moving around the school to visit different classes in our key stage. Each class had new tasks for us to explore and try out from building shapes, using playing cards to improve our mental maths, enjoying weighing items using balance scales, building fractions with multilink, creating numicon cities and so much more! 

We raised just under £200 for the charity and had lots of fun. 

KS2 England Rocks TTRS competition - November '22

We competed with thousands of other schools in a times table challenge on Times Tables Rock Stars. We celebrated and awarded the top scorers in each class as well a the class who got the highest across the school. Well done Foxes!

Useful links 

Calculation Policy