Mathematics
Intent:
Mathematics is essential to everyday life and teaches children how to make sense of the world around them through developing their ability to calculate, reason and solve problems in a variety of contexts. At Reynolds Academy, we endeavour to develop each pupil individually and personally, to promote enthusiasm, confidence and a love of mathematics itself, and to provide children of all ages with a foundation for understanding the world through the delivery of a high-quality mathematics education.
To ensure consistency and progression at Reynolds Academy, every class from Early Years Foundation Stage to Year 6 follows the nationally recognised White Rose Maths Scheme of Learning. This scheme is designed to support a mastery approach to teaching and learning, as well as to support the aims and objectives of the National Curriculum where teaching and learning should show progression across all key stages within the different strands of Maths.
Implementation:
The White Rose Maths scheme has number at its heart and a lot of time is spent reinforcing number to build children's competency in the subject. It also provides opportunities to build reasoning and problem-solving into each lesson. Mathematical topics are taught in blocks and these teaching blocks are broken down into smaller steps to help children understand mathematical concepts better. Once a mathematical concept is covered, it is revisited throughout the year to encourage deep learning and to ensure our children have the foundational knowledge they need before moving on to more advanced maths concepts and tackling more challenging number problems.
When a new concept is introduced, children are taught through clear modelling, encouraged to speak about their learning throughout group activities and are helped to see that mistakes are positive learning opportunities. The mastery approach incorporates using concrete objects and manipulatives to help our children understand what they are doing. Alongside this, children are encouraged to use pictorial representations; these representations can then be used to help reason and solve problems. Both concrete and pictorial representations support our children's understanding of abstract methods. To support children's mathematical language and to further develop their reasoning skills, we use stem sentences as a learning scaffold to help our children respond (orally and through writing) using complete sentences. At the start of each new topic, key vocabulary is introduced and revisited regularly allowing everyone the opportunity to 'talk like a mathematician'.
All children in KS1 and KS2 have access to 'Times Table Rock Stars' which is a fun and challenging programme designed to help pupils master the times tables, and each week, a times tables focus is planned to give children the opportunity to practise and improve their rapid recall skills with facts up to 12x12, and competitions across the academy are set each term.
Please click on the links below to find out more about how we deliver our Mathematics curriculum.
