At Avonwood, the mathematics curriculum ensures that all children thrive and develop a rich and connected understanding of core concepts regardless of their background or prior mathematical experiences. Through the key principles outlined above, we ensure that children will master what is being taught and be able to apply the maths to a range of situations and contexts.

We ensure that all children fulfil the learning goal through our key principles: the teachers present themselves as ‘the expert’ in the classroom, delivering the content through a scaffolded approach in alignment with current educational research; the lessons taught are carefully sequenced, taking into account The White Rose progression, the National curriculum and teacher assessment; this sequencing is also encompassed by our goal of ‘responsive planning’, where gaps are identified, we aim to fill these as quickly as possible to ensure that no child be left behind; finally, we have adopted a mastery approach which allows children to develop a conceptual and connected understanding of core concepts through the use of manipulatives, the careful selection of examples and the precise use of mathematical vocabulary.

Maths is more than factual recall and following steps, it is about understanding how and why things work. It is also about being able to use the knowledge learnt in the classroom and applying it to the real world. This can often be seen in our ‘Golden Acorn’ challenges, which challenge each child at the end of the lesson to apply their learning in a new context. These challenges the boundaries of children’s understanding and expands their schemata, drawing connections to both previous learning and life experiences, developing our aim of conceptual understanding. We create positive experiences that provide firm foundations for KS3, KS4 and beyond by providing them with key skills and strategies to problem solve, such as bar models, which allow children to support their reasoning. Our vision is to develop analytical thinkers whilst keeping alive the love of learning.

Maths at Avonwood is a purposeful, engaging, and enriching experience which challenges all pupils to flourish into the best mathematician that they can be.

Subject Intent

Teaching for Mastery

Our aim is to equip all pupils with the skills and confidence to solve a range of mathematical problems through fluency with numbers and mathematical reasoning. We strive to help pupils make connections between mathematical concepts and demonstrate their understanding in a variety of ways.

Attitude: We aim for pupils at Avonwood Primary school to display a positive approach to maths and to embrace a challenge whilst seeing mistakes as part of the learning process.

Wider curriculum: The pupils are encouraged to look for and apply mathematics in all aspects of the wider curriculum, developing essential life skills and an enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.

Building knowledge: We aim to build knowledge and skills by regularly revisiting key concepts, providing the pupils with the opportunity to rehearse them through practice consolidating and deepening their understanding.

We believe that children should be active participants throughout the whole maths lesson. We want pupils to feel confident to share their ideas and thinking and to have a go even when they are unsure. The children are encouraged to question one another and build on each other’s ideas through their explanations.

We aim for all pupils to:

Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics so that they develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.

Be able to solve problems by identifying, understanding and applying relevant mathematical principles to a variety of problems, including in unfamiliar and real-life contexts. We ensure problem solving takes place in every lesson in some form.

Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry and develop and present a justification, argument or proof using mathematical language.

Subject Implementation

What does maths look like at Avonwood?

Pedagogy at Avonwood Primary school focuses on breaking down learning into small steps to make sure the pupils are active throughout the lesson. We follow the White Rose maths planning to ensure our children have the full coverage and this is supported by clear skills and knowledge progression. This ensures that skills and knowledge are built on year by year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all children. Challenge focuses on depth and breadth of understanding and we expect the children to be able to apply their knowledge in a range of challenging scenarios.

Teachers use questioning throughout the maths lesson to elicit understanding and to further challenge the children to think deeper. The questions used are precise and develop mathematical thinking. Through these questions, teachers check for understanding as well as unpicking any misconceptions. AfL will be carried out in a number of ways, such as circulating during independent work, cold calling, ‘Ready-To-Progress’ quizzes and mini whoteboards.

Teachers will use precise mathematical language, ensuring that new vocabulary is explicitly taught especially where terms may have a dual meaning. When pupils are answering questions and explaining their reasoning, teachers will support them to use precise mathematical language.

Where children are working significantly below their expected age-related requirements, scaffolding and targeted work will be provided daily. This work will have been planned by the teacher and will be in line with their PLP targets which have been agreed by both the SENDco and parents.

6 Phase lesson design across the school (EYFS to Year 6):

Monthly review task
Daily review task
Teacher Modelling & Explaining
We: Guided Practice
You: Independent Task
Discussion-based Plenary

Manipulatives and representations.

At Avonwood we use the number line as the core representation to help to underpin the effective acquisition of both conceptual understanding and procedural fluency. In Early years, it is used alongside Numicon and ten frames to build 1:1 correspondence. In Year 1, they begin by using a number track progressing onto a number line to support with counting and ordering numbers. In Year 2, the number line is used to support the children’s development of additive reasoning and procedures. Throughout Key stage 2, the number line underpins the work across a variety of domains, including ordinality (estimation), rational numbers (fractions) and multiplicative reasoning.