Intent

At Alston Lane, we believe that having a solid understanding of mathematics is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment.  Therefore, through our high-quality mathematics curriculum, we strive for all our children to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics and have the ability to apply this knowledge in varied contexts, develop the skills to reason mathematically and to become confident and successful problem solvers.

Our mastery approach to teaching mathematics enables children to identify the connections between the different strands of mathematics and equips them with a range of methods to help them make intelligent choices when problems solving. We believe that all children should have the same opportunities to succeed in mathematics and our intent is to help children to ‘keep-up’ not ‘catch-up’.  We aim to make mathematics an exciting and varied experience to enable children to flourish and achieve. 

Implementation

At Alston Lane our long-term mathematics planning is sequenced following the White Rose mastery approach where the goal is to deepen understanding so that each lesson builds upon the last.  Mathematical concepts and skills are spiralised across the key stages so that concepts taught are revisited the following year, but in greater depth to allow children to build on prior knowledge.  In each year group, there is a focus on number (place value, addition/subtraction and multiplication/division) in the Autumn term so that the children can apply this knowledge in other mathematical disciplines across the year. 

There is a clear progression of the teaching pedagogy across the school which is appropriate for the age of the child. Practitioners in EYFS start working with concrete manipulatives and children use their fine and gross motor skills to apply their mathematical learning in real life contexts.  Maths learning is also developed within continuous provision with an aim of consolidating and developing mathematical learning alongside the characteristics of learning.  In key stage 1, teachers skilfully use concrete manipulatives to deepen the children’s understanding of number and calculations.  As the children progress through KS2, calculations are secured and there is an emphasis on reasoning and problem solving to deepen understanding. 

In line with our ‘keep-up’ not ‘catch-up’ philosophy, teachers are skilled at meeting the needs of all children.  Across the school, children have access to a wide range of manipulatives which are demonstrated in the White Rose approach. When children are secure with their fluency, they will have the opportunity deepen their understanding with reasoning and problem-solving activities.  Through ‘live marking’ and assessment for learning practices, teachers are skilled at identifying and addressing misconceptions in a timely manner.  Where children have more significant gaps in learning, teachers will use the DfE Ready to Progress criteria to create a more individual and tailored programme of intervention.