Curriculum & Assessment
Maths
Maths at Stillness
Intent
We aim to provide a high quality maths education – teaching children the essential skills and knowledge to develop an understanding of the world and to create a natural curiosity and love for maths as a subject. As a core subject in the National Curriculum, children across the school engage in daily Maths sessions to advance their learning. Maths at Stillness is an enjoyable and rewarding experience for pupils and is designed to engage all learners. Lessons aim to equip them with the tools to become real mathematicians. We encourage children to consider different strategies and to learn from mistakes while offering opportunities for both independent and collaborative work; through trying different strategies and approaches, they develop the skills of perseverance and resilience, as well as recognising the importance of working as a team.
Implementation
As highlighted in the National Curriculum, all children must be able to access fluency, reasoning and problem solving. It’s therefore essential that we as teachers provide the support needed for every child to reason mathematically and this is often evidenced in their problem solving.
We use the White Rose Maths hub as a basis for our maths planning; this supports ‘Teaching for Mastery’. A mathematical concept or skill has been mastered when a pupil can represent it in multiple ways, has the mathematical language to communicate related ideas, and can independently apply the concept to new problems in unfamiliar situations.
Mastery is a journey and long-term goal, achieved through exploration, clarification, practice and application over time. At each stage of learning, pupils should be able to demonstrate a deep, conceptual understanding of the topic and be able to build on this over time.
The White Rose curriculum is a cumulative curriculum, so that once a topic is covered, it is met many times again in other contexts. For example, place value is revisited in addition and subtraction and multiplication and division. The curriculum recognises the importance of children’s conceptual understanding of number. It is therefore designed to ensure that time is invested in reinforcing this to build competency.
Lessons are planned to provide plenty of opportunities to build reasoning and problem solving elements into the curriculum. When introduced to a new concept, children have the opportunity to use concrete objects and manipulatives to help them 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 children’s understanding of abstract methods.
Mathematical topics are taught in blocks, to enable the achievement of ‘mastery’ over time. These teaching blocks are broken down into smaller steps, to help children understand concepts better. This approach means that children do not cover too many concepts at once which can lead to cognitive overload.
Impact
The school has a supportive ethos and our approaches supports the children in developing their collaborative and independent skills, as well as empathy and the need to recognise the achievement of others. Students can underperform in Mathematics because they think they cannot do it or are not naturally good at it. The school’s use of White Rose Maths addresses these preconceptions by ensuring that all children experience challenge and success in Mathematics by developing a growth mindset.
Regular and ongoing assessment informs teaching to support and enable the success of each child.
National assessments that are carried out in Maths are:
- Year 4 Multiplication check
- Year 6 Key Stage 2 SATs
White Rose Maths Hub Yearly Overviews
Click on each year group to see an overview of the maths curriculum for each year:
Multiplication and Division Calculation Policy
Addition and Subtraction Calculation Policy
Beyond the Curriculum
At Stillness Juniors our learning goes beyond the curriculum and is supplemented in a number of different ways. We enrich our knowledge through workshops – some led by our wonderful parents, themed days, school trips, team sports, and afterschool clubs to name some. Head over to our gallery and our Instagram page where you will see a showcase of these activities.
