Maths

At Far Forest Primary School, we strive to ensure that all children enjoy mathematics and have the confidence to apply their knowledge and skills to their everyday lives. Our mathematics teaching nurtures a positive ‘can-do’ attitude and develops fluency, reasoning and problem solving skills.

To achieve this, we believe that all pupils should develop a deep understanding of the mathematics they are learning as opposed to accelerating through curriculum content. Therefore, we are committed to spending a longer time exploring key concepts, especially number, place value, four operations, times tables and division facts to develop fluency, promote mathematical reasoning and problem solve. In order to support this, we follow a concrete-pictorial-abstract approach, which gives all children the opportunity to build a solid understanding of the mathematics that they are learning. Revisiting, refreshing and retaining skills enables our pupils to transfer this to their long term memory.

As a school, we believe that the vast majority of pupils can master the key ideas in mathematics and we have the confidence to take learning at a steadier and deeper pace in order to achieve this. In our lessons, the whole class work together on the same key area of mathematics with appropriate support, challenge and scaffolds in place. During every lesson, we assess the children’s understanding and plan greater depth activities and teacher-led support to ensure all children make excellent progress. We focus on all children having a deep and sustainable understanding of their year group targets and not accelerating beyond this. As a result, we believe pupils will become true masters of mathematics, applying and reasoning with new knowledge and skills in many ways.

Fluency is the foundation of problem-solving. 

Fluency

Becoming fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice, ensures that that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. At Far Forest, fluency is developed through the use of ‘Daily Fluency’, children in Key Stage One focus on subitising and key number facts such as number bonds. Key Stage Two focus on key number facts and the four operations. Rapid recall of times tables, including multiplication and division facts, is developed through the use of Times Tables Rockstars, providing children with engaging activities to learn their tables.

Reasoning
At Far Forest, children reason mathematically by accessing appropriately pitched maths content during lessons, so that they can think logically in order to arrive at solutions or sometimes find many different solutions. Children at Far Forest provide justification or proof using mathematical language to explain a solution.

Problem Solving
At Far Forest, children solve mathematical problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of problems. Pupils achieve this by breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in finding solutions. Children often collaborate with others to share ideas. In order to solve a problem, children will draw on one or more problem-solving skills, such as:

• Working systematically
• Working backwards
• Logical reasoning
• Spotting patterns
• Visualising
• Trial and improvement

Impact

Teaching staff and support staff use a wide range of formative assessment tools during the lesson to judge the impact that the teaching is having on the children’s learning.

A lesson is delivered at the beginning of a unit to gauge children’s prior understanding of a topic. This lesson is then used to show children what new learning will take place in this unit providing opportunities for children to make connections between their prior understanding and what is coming next. Teachers use effective questioning in class to test conceptual and procedural knowledge and assess children regularly to identify those requiring intervention, so that all children keep up.

To further measure the impact of maths teaching and learning we also deliver summative assessments at the end of each term. This is a helpful tool to measure how deep the children have learned a concept when it is assessed out of context and at a later date to the initial teacher input.