Intent 

At Collingwood Primary School our mathematics curriculum is designed to foster a love of learning, equipping pupils with  knowledge of essential maths skills. We aim to develop confident and resilient mathematicians, who can draw upon their fluency skills to problem solve, think critically and have fun!

Our intent is to: 

1. Build strong early mathematical concepts: Starting in Early Years and through to KS1 to ensure children have a secure understanding of quantity and number, operations, shape and space and forming connections between these skills. 

2. Improve fluency and recall: Ensuring children develop speed and accuracy recalling facts such as number bonds, doubling, halving and times tables. (Procedural fluency)

3. Promoting problem solving and reasoning skills: Encouraging children to explore their ideas and justify their thinking using mathematical vocabulary. (Conceptual understanding)

4. Nurturing a growth mindset across pupils and parents: emphasising learning from our mistakes in mathematics to build resilience and self-belief in our abilities as learners. Supporting the wider community of the school to foster this belief at home, through support for parents and carers. 

5. Encouraging a love of mathematics: improving children’s perceptions of mathematics as a subject through whole school celebrations and encouraging mathematical enjoyment. 

Implementation  

At Collingwood we follow the White Rose Maths scheme of learning, teaching across three terms, in blocks, to deepen understanding. Teachers draw on a range of resources to create the best possible learning environment for pupils, moving the children from the stages of concrete (“doing” with apparatus) to pictorial (using and drawing pictures and notation to solve) then abstract (applying known facts to new scenarios and working mentally). Consolidation weeks are built into each term to revisit outcomes that have been identified as needing further development.

Fluency and retrieval in maths is a priority; FAST maths and recall of timestables and number bonds take place throughout the week to develop recall of mathematical facts and allow children to see links in their learning, e.g. the relationships between the 2x, 4x and 8x multiplication tables.

Reasoning is part of every lesson.  A variety of challenges enable children to verbalise and discuss their understanding. Children are taught to ‘explore’, maths, ‘clarify then ‘apply" their mathematical skills.   We use Times Tables Rockstars and other online subscriptions to support learning at home and at school. Ask your child what their current ‘Rock Star’ status is!

More personalised assessments can be found in your child’s "Supporting Learning Book" which should be kept in their book bag.