Maths
Our intent is to produce an ambitious, connected curriculum accessible to all pupils in school right through from EYFS to the end of Y6. Our curriculum will not only cover all the content of the National Curriculum, but also provide advice and exemplification for teachers and parents. Please see our latest calculation policy which exemplifies the use of practical resources for children.
As a school we want pupils to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, to be able to reason and to solve problems. Our curriculum embraces these National Curriculum aims, and provides guidance to help pupils to:
- Use the Concrete Pictorial Abstract approach (p.3 of our calculation policy) to help pupils understand mathematics and to make connections between different representations.
- Develop mathematical language and questioning so pupils can discuss the mathematics they are doing, and support them to take ideas further.
- Become fluent mathematicians, and foster a love of learning for mathematics.
Why do we use the White Rose Maths curriculum and follow an order of progression?
To learn mathematics effectively, some things have to be learned before others, e.g. place value needs to be understood before working with addition and subtraction, addition needs to be learnt before looking at multiplication (as a model of repeated addition).
As a school we emphasise number skills first, carefully ordered, throughout our primary curriculum. For some other topics, the order isn’t as crucial, e.g. Shapes and Statistics need to come after number, but don’t depend on each other. We mix these so pupils have as wide a variety of mathematical experiences as possible in each term and year.
We are proud of our mastery approach and inclusive teaching of maths here at Pallister Park Primary. During a lesson, children can explore and choose a concrete, pictorial or abstract way of working. Teachers model all three stages of working to encourage children to practically use equipment, to visually see a concept, and then to apply the prior learning to an abstract method which involves using symbols, digits and working mentally. We follow the White Rose scheme for each year group.
