Maths

Subject Lead: Mrs Abbott

OUR INTENT

We recognise that Maths is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. In providing a high-quality maths education, we allow our children to understand the world, reason mathematically, appreciate the beauty and power of mathematics and develop a sense of curiosity and enjoyment for the subject. Mastering maths means pupils acquire a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject that is solid enough to enable them to move on to more advanced material in the future. True mastery aims to develop all children’s mathematical understanding at the same pace.


Our mathematics curriculum has been designed to provide a solid foundation; enabling our children to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics. Children of all abilities learn together to achieve maths mastery within each strand of mathematics, supported by the use of concrete resources, pictorial representations and clearly modelled abstract methods. Their learning is underpinned by a focus on knowing and exploring number facts through the Mastering Number programme and frequent rehearsal of multiplication tables. Problem solving and reasoning skills are explicitly taught and frequently practised by all children through all strands of mathematics. 


Our curriculum is designed to allow all children the chance to leave Arden Primary School as mathematicians; resilient, aspirational and independent.

At Arden, we teach the National Curriculum objectives based around long-term planning documents produced by the White Rose Maths Hub. This is put into action in the classroom through daily maths lessons. This sequence has been refined by our highly skilled subject leader in order to meet the needs of every child at the school. The subject leader has worked carefully to create a Progressive Skills Document, where objectives for each year group are progressively mapped out to ensure our pupils are given the acquired skills and knowledge to further enhance their education journey into mathematics at KS3.

We have a strong focus on adaptive teaching throughout the school. As much as possible, children access the same learning. Differentiation is primarily through support, scaffolding and deepening, not through task. At Arden, we teach in mixed ability classes with mixed ability talk partners. Aspire challenges are used to deepen understanding.

Our maths subject leader is a highly skilled maths graduate, who works closely with subject specialists and the North West Maths Hub as part of the NCETM (an institution set up in the wake of the Smith Report to improve mathematics teaching in England). We regularly participate in projects through the hub to ensure we remain at the forefront of best practice in maths mastery teaching and several members of teaching and support staff have participated in funded courses around subject knowledge and teaching for mastery. A number of these projects have seen colleagues from other schools come to Arden to observe excellent teaching practice.

Maths is a key focus of our school development plan for 2024/25. This is reflective of our aspiration for excellent standards across school. 

We scrutinise the efficiency of our teaching approach and its impact on children's knowledge, understanding and progress through: 

- Trio approach to lesson planning and observations
- Information from formal book scrutinies
- Termly teacher assessments 
- Performance data 
- Subject leader monitoring
- Learning walks
- Lesson observations
- Lesson drop ins
- Weekly 'Friday Flicks'
- Pupil voice
- School Improvement Team liaison
- Governor visits
- Maths 'One Voice' documentation

Calculation Policy