Maths
Our Vision for Maths at Thameside
At Thameside, we are dedicated to ensuring that every child has every opportunity to not only achieve success in mathematics but also to develop into a curious, creative, and confident mathematician. We aim to instil a lasting love for mathematics that will support them throughout their education and into their future lives.
Building a firm foundation in mathematics is critical. We ensure that our children develop a deep understanding of key mathematical concepts and the mental fluency needed to apply these in a variety of problems and real-life contexts. Through a reflective learning approach, we encourage children to embrace mistakes as valuable learning opportunities, fostering resilience and enjoyment in the challenge of problem-solving. Our adaptive teaching methods and hands-on learning experiences ensure that children develop the skills and understanding needed to apply mathematics confidently in and beyond the classroom. With a strong emphasis on reasoning and precise mathematical vocabulary, as well as concrete, abstract and pictorial representations, we support our children in articulating their thinking clearly and confidently.
Irrespective of individual needs or circumstances, we are committed to providing every child, every chance, every day with the tailored support and opportunities they need to thrive, empowering them to become life-long mathematicians.
What makes Maths different at Thameside?
Maths at Thameside reflects our 5Rs, curriculum drivers and school motto, ‘Every Child, Every Chance, Every Day’. We believe that every moment should be grasped to give every child the opportunities to deepen and extend their mathematical knowledge and understanding.
The Maths curriculum has been designed to include the rehearsal of core facts, methods and strategies that can be used to develop fluency; secure foundational mathematical knowledge and solve problems, right from the Early Years. There are also daily opportunities for explaining, justifying and proving concepts using informal and diagrammatic methods.
Our aim is to secure firm foundations in the development of good number sense for all children from Reception through to Year 1 and Year 2 and that all children leave Key Stage 1 with fluency in calculation and a confidence and flexibility with number. We ensure that the key knowledge and understanding needed in Reception classes and progression through Key Stage 1 is prioritised to support success in the future.
In reasoning, we encourage all pupils to deepen their understanding and challenge their findings through our four curriculum drivers:
- Talk – explaining methods and solutions, choices and decisions.
- Read – planning, deciding, organising, interpreting and justifying
- Think – creating, deducing, applying, exploring, predicting, hypothesising and testing.
- Link - analysing, recording, doing, checking and confirming.
Enrichment opportunities in Maths are also a core part of our offer at Thameside - this includes the Trust annual Maths challenge; annual NSPCC Number Day and ensuring that mathematical games and resources are available at break and lunch to encourage mathematical play.
What are lessons like?
Each Maths lesson begins in the same way with a revisit and retrieval of arithmetic knowledge from last week, last month or last year. This helps us to build connections between what we have already learnt and new learning we do. Previous vocabulary is recapped, followed by a discussion about what we know already that is going to help us with today’s learning. This ensures that pupils build on prior knowledge to support new learning. Children are aware of their Maths Learning Journey each week and are able to talk about why they are learning about different concepts. Our pedagogical approaches in Maths are rooted firmly in research and are underpinned by our 'Thameside 10' teaching principles.
Our lesson approach ensures that children, through the use of consistent manipulatives and pictorial representations, develop fluency before moving through a wide variety of reasoning and problem-solving activities to deepen and apply their knowledge. Our use of ‘flashbacks’ ensures that children’s knowledge is embedded through revisiting concepts regularly and via opportunities to apply knowledge in a variety of ways.
Additional daily fluency are also taught each afternoon from Year 1 to Year 6, to further ensure that children have secured the core foundational knowledge and skills in each year group and so that, crucially, they are given enough time to practice and embed this knowledge and these skills so that they remember them.
What do we mean by progress?
Our long-term plans demonstrate which concepts are taught and in what order. We follow the small steps of White Rose, however, using formative assessment information, we adapt it to suit the needs and starting points of our pupils.
We supplement this with resources such as the NCETM, I see Reasoning and Nrich.
Times tables and number facts are practised daily through Times Table Rockstars and Numbots at home and at school. Times Table Rocks Stars and Numbots progress is celebrated weekly as part of Celebrations assembly - this is also shared in the termly newsletters.
Sequences of learning allow pupils to access their familiarity with the facts and methods they need, in order to learn strategies for solving problems. We use carefully planned questions so that pupils are guided to build on what they know.
What do we mean by assessment?
Assessment in Maths is carried out in three ways and is used to ensure that teaching carefully takes into account the starting points of children.
Formative
In every lesson, teachers are making informal assessments using a range of activities such as questioning, quizzing, marking and identifying misconceptions.
Numbots and Timestable Rockstars enegement and performance data are reviewed termly and as part of pupil progress conversations
Summative
In every term, pupils from Y1-6 take part in White Rose Unit assessments which focus on arithmetic and reasoning. The results are analysed and shared at pupil progress meetings.
Tarrgetted interventions are put into place for those pupils who are not meeting the expectations for their age, informed by the 'Ready to Progress' documentation.
Statutory
Statutory assessment in maths takes place at the end of each Key Stage every May.
The EYFS profile against the Early Learning Goals takes place in June.
The Y4 multiplication check takes place in June.