An excellent maths education empowers children to think and reason about the world around them: to notice differences, to be creative and curious and to develop resilience in problem solving.  A well designed curriculum  equips children with a love of mathematical thinking, joy in geometry and  the ability to look for patterns and relationships, make connections, conjecture, reason, generalise and apply these skills to wider disciplines and the world around them.   Consistent teaching and learning, informed by research based pedagogy, ensures that each child is well prepared to succeed in their secondary education and beyond – it is the right of every child.  At St Barnabas, we are dedicated to ensuring that all children develop a love of maths and are provided with a mathematical education that is designed for success.   Maths opens doors to the future.

We aim for all children to be confident and secure mathematicians who are able to: 

• represent mathematical ideas in different ways
• express mathematical ideas confidently and reason about maths
• understand their own experience as learners
• develop resilience in problem solving 
• work collaboratively and independently
• apply their knowledge in unfamiliar contexts
• be provided with opportunities to develop fluency
• understand the structures underlying maths
• know when to apply strategies, how to apply them and why 
• to know some of the history of maths which is collaboratively created through proof and how maths has shaped our world and will continue to shape our future
• to love maths, be encouraged to believe in their own mathematical ability and have the confidence and motivation to achieve highly

At St Barnabas we follow the White Rose Curriculum, which offers a framework to teach the Mathematics Programme of Study as laid out by the National Curriculum and the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, and we are guided by DFE guidance documents https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teaching-mathematics-in-primary-schools. We also use other high-quality resources, including National Centre of Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM), NRICH and a variety of other enrichment resources.  White Rose provides an ambitious, connected curriculum accessible to all pupils in school right through from Reception to the end of Year 6,  which ensures they are well prepared for the move to secondary.  This curriculum covers all the content of the National Curriculum and provides a structured coherent curriculum to develop pupils into mathematical thinkers. White Rose has been influenced, inspired and informed by the work of leading maths researchers and practitioners across the world and is based on the latest pedagogical research and teaching for mastery.

Teaching is designed to enable a coherent learning progression through the curriculum, providing access for all pupils to develop a deep and connected understanding of mathematics that they can apply and communicate in a range of contexts.  Small step learning enables all learners to progress at the same rate while adaptive teaching strategies provide the opportunity for children to be supported and extended. 

From reception through to year 6 children secure conditional knowledge of maths (the ability to choose strategies formed from a combination of facts and methods) to reason about maths and solve problems. 

Representation

Consistent use of carefully chosen representation enables children to ‘see’ the maths through the use of mathematical equipment and visual representations.     These representations become mental images that students can use to think about and discuss mathematics, supporting them to achieve a deep understanding of mathematical structures and connections.  For example, in place value we may use a gattegno chart to understand the concept of 10 times bigger or 100 times smaller, whereas we may use a hundred square to explore patterns in number or a rekenrek to learn about the composition of numbers.   This builds deep conceptual understanding before abstracting the maths and builds secure foundational understanding.

Oracy

As well as ‘seeing’ the maths we also place a lot of emphasis on talking about maths.  Emphasis is placed on the precise use of mathematical language with stem sentences and regular choral rehearsal so that children can articulate their ideas fluently and reason about maths.  Talk rich activities promote a vibrant buzz around the learning and provide the opportunities for children to explore misconceptions and share their alternative strategies for efficiency with each other.. 

Fluency

Efficient, accurate recall of key number facts and procedures is essential for fluency, freeing pupils’ minds to think deeply about concepts and problems, but fluency demands more than this. It requires pupils to have the flexibility to move between different contexts and representations of mathematics, to recognise relationships and make connections, to explain their ideas and to choose appropriate methods and strategies to solve problems.   As well as regular fluency practice within daily lessons, we also make provision for regular fluency practice: children develop automaticity in number and times tables through Mastering Number in reception through to our mixed year 2 / 3 class; we use a research based times table intervention in years 3, 4 and 5 and targeted practice with 1 minute maths app.  Place value, number operations, and shape, space and measure are practised in Flashback Five  in years 3,4 and 5 to consolidate on prior learning. 

Variation

The White Rose maths provides daily lessons with carefully designed tasks which expose key features of mathematical concepts or structure through conceptual and procedural variation.  By varying some elements while keeping others constant the teacher focuses thinking and discussion on the key feature in question.  By  varying how a concept is represented children’s attention is drawn to critical features. Looking at different representations of the same concept allows children to explore from different perspectives and gain comprehensive knowledge.  Procedural variation considers how the student will ‘proceed’ through a learning sequence. Purposeful changes are made to draw pupil’s attention to key features of the mathematics, scaffolding students’ thinking to enable them to reason logically and make connections. 

Mathematical thinking

Through a rich variety of enrichment resources, such as reasoning and problem tasks from WRM, Gareth Metcalf and the Third Space extension tasks, children are given activities and tasks which encourage them to look for patterns in order to discern structure: to look for relationships and connect ideas.  This develops their ability to reason logically, explain their own or another pupil’s mathematical thinking , make conjectures and provide proof.  

Mathematics teaching for mastery assumes everyone can learn and enjoy mathematics.
Mathematical learning behaviours are developed such that pupils focus and engage fully as learners who reason and seek to make connections. Teachers continually develop their specialist knowledge for teaching mathematics with use of subject knowledge documents for each lesson from the White Rose and by working collaboratively to refine and improve their teaching through CPD on adaptive teaching tailored to ensure support and extension opportunities for all children.
Curriculum design ensures a coherent and detailed sequence of essential content to support sustained progression over time.

Implementation

Mathematics teaching for mastery assumes everyone can learn and enjoy mathematics.
Mathematical learning behaviours are developed such that pupils focus and engage fully as learners who reason and seek to make connections. Teachers continually develop their specialist knowledge for teaching mathematics with use of subject knowledge documents for each lesson from the White Rose Hub and by working collaboratively to refine and improve their teaching through CPD in adaptive teaching tailored to ensure support and extension opportunities for all children.
Curriculum design ensures a coherent and detailed sequence of essential content to support sustained progression over time.

Lesson design

Lesson design links to prior learning to ensure all can access the new learning and identifies carefully sequenced steps in progression to build secure understanding.
Examples, representations and models are carefully selected to expose the structure of mathematical concepts and emphasise connections, enabling pupils to develop a deep knowledge of mathematics.  Key vocabulary and mathematical language is explicitly taught  alongside the use of visual representation.
Procedural fluency and conceptual understanding are developed in tandem, each supports the development of the other, through the use of White Rose maths learning resources which provide carefully designed tasks to facilitate both. 
It is recognised that practice is a vital part of learning, but the practice must be designed to both reinforce pupils’ procedural fluency and develop their conceptual understanding. 

In the Classroom

Pupils are taught through whole-class interactive teaching, enabling all to master the concepts necessary for the next part of the curriculum sequence.
In a typical lesson, the teacher leads back and forth interaction, including questioning, short tasks, explanation, demonstration, and discussion, enabling pupils to think, reason and apply their knowledge to solve problems.
Use of precise mathematical language enables all pupils to communicate their reasoning and thinking effectively.
If a pupil fails to grasp a concept or procedure, this is identified quickly, and gaps in understanding are addressed systematically to prevent them falling behind.
Significant time is spent developing deep understanding of the key ideas that are needed to underpin future learning.
Key number facts are learnt to automaticity, and other key mathematical facts are learned deeply and practised regularly, to avoid cognitive overload in working memory and enable pupils to focus on new learning.

Staff members have actively engaged in staff development through the BBO Maths Hub.  The Maths Hub programme is supported by the National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics and funded by the DfE. Maths Hubs bring together mathematics education professionals in a collaborative national network, to develop and spread excellent practice, for the benefit of all pupils.  In house CPD is provided by our subject lead, who is a maths mastery specialist and professional development lead, previously supporting the development of maths in schools across Oxfordshire as an LLM with the BBO hub.   Teaching staff have also received CPD and support from our local Maths Hub to further enhance and develop the quality of teaching and learning, understand up-to-date practice and resources to support the teaching of maths. Our reception, year 1 and year 2 teachers are engaged with the Mastering Number programme which provides professional development in mastery teaching for teachers and ensures children develop precise mathematical use of language and number sense – the ability to understand the relationship between numbers with clear progression from reception through to year 2 and 3. 

• All children aspire to achieve highly in maths
• All children know they can get better at maths through practice and can overcome gaps in learning
• Children enjoy working collaboratively and independently on maths activities and can talk about the maths they are learning
• While all children move through the curriculum at the same pace, teachers seek to support and provide extension tasks for all learners. 
• Children flourish mathematically through teaching which is informed by research based pedagogy
• Teachers are continually developing their own subject knowledge and working collaboratively to improve the quality of teaching and learning in maths 
• Most children leave the school working at age related expectations or considerably exceeding them

Continuous assessment informs future teaching and builds a picture of each child’s attainment and progress over time. Teachers have received CPD to develop strategies for continuous assessment for learning during teaching. Children are an active part of assessing their own learning, through regular feedback in lessons, post learning quizzes and engagement with  quality resources such as : White Rose Maths True or False slides,  starter questions and reasoning and problem solving slides;  Gareth Metcalf’s reasoning and problem solving resources; Third Space Learning extension materials; Nrich activities and the NCETM progression in reasoning  documents.   Children are developing  automaticity in number,  times tables, place value, number operations, and shape, space and measure, by revisiting and practising these skills in daily maths lessons with Flashback Four in years 3/4 and  5 and focused interventions such as Mastering Number in reception through to year 2/3, arithmetic practice in year 6 and research based times table practice to develop automaticity in years 3 and 4 and 5.  Children are taught to mark their own work and fix mistakes, reflecting on what they found difficult and need more practise with. After each teaching unit is completed (every two to three weeks), children sit an assessment which enables the teachers to plan for future learning opportunities to support and extend children’s progress.   Formal teacher assessment points take place 2x yearly using NFER maths to inform overall judgements. For years two and six, the children undertake standardised assessment tests (SATs) during May. This assessment approach gives teachers the information that they need to build a holistic picture of each individual child and enables them to plan further support and opportunities for retrieval; direct teaching and/or adaptation for future lessons and units. Groups with additional needs are carefully tracked in order to tailor provision which supports and extends them.   The subject leader monitors summative assessments to identify trends that inform future curriculum alterations and CPD opportunities.