Maytree Nursery and Infant School

Our Maths Vision Statement

Our maths curriculum incorporates Maytree’s commitment to oracy, providing children with opportunities to develop their mathematical vocabulary and reasoning skills. Our aim is for children to become mathematically fluent, with transferable knowledge and skills which enable them to become confident risk takers who reason and solve problems in a range of contexts

We believe that language should not be a barrier to success and achievement in Maths. The language of mathematics is international and the core skills of mathematics are essential for the life opportunities of our children

At Maytree, our Maths Mastery curriculum ensures every child can achieve. We provide pupils with deep learning and understanding of concepts and number through use of varied representations in concrete, pictorial and abstract approaches. This ensures pupils fully develop conceptual understanding, allowing them to make connections and becoming fluent mathematicians who are confident and accurate in their ability to transfer knowledge to new learning and apply their understanding to new concepts both in and outside of the classroom.

Our Aims:

*To implement the current legal requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and the National Curriculum (NC) using the White Rose Maths documents for guidance.

*For our children to develop a ‘can do’ attitude and perceive themselves as mathematicians who can take risks.

*To ensure children become fluent in the fundamentals of maths, developing conceptual knowledge and an ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately

*To ensure that children can reason mathematically and solve problems

*For our children to use and understand mathematical language and recognise its importance as a language for communication and thinking.

Key features of Maths at Maytree:

*Maths is enjoyable and engaging

*High expectations and opportunities for greater depth learning for all

*Number sense and place value come first and are regularly revisited to ensure foundations are secure ahead of new learning.

*There is a focus on the development of mathematical thinking and language by talking about maths using resources, varied representations, imagery, stem sentences, key vocabulary and language

*Maths mastery is progressive from Nursery to Year 2 where calculation, representations, planning and teaching are consistent which in turn ensures our children are always ready to progress.

*Focus on developing deep conceptual understanding of the ideas behind the maths so that they can apply their skills confidently to solve problems

Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

Mathematics within the EYFS at Maytree is developed through purposeful, play based experiences and will be represented throughout the indoor and outdoor provision. The learning is based on children’s interests and current themes and focuses on the expectations from Development Matters / Early Years Outcomes (DFE 2020) . Mathematical understanding is developed through use of stories, songs, games, imaginative play, child initiated learning and structured teaching. As children progress, they are encouraged to record their mathematical thinking in a more formal way.

National Curriculum Aims

At Maytree , planning and teaching in Key Stage 1 is based on The National Curriculum (DFE 2014) mathematics aims in order to ensure that all pupils: 

• Become fluent 
• Reason and explain mathematically 
• Can solve problems

Planning, Teaching and Learning in Maths

At Maytree Maths teaching and learning follows a maths mastery approach, it is progressive where teachers use year group overviews to guide their planning. Year group maths overviews are based on EYFS and NC outcomes. In Key stage 1 this is set out within workable Year 1 and 2 milestone curriculum documents.

All children receive a daily maths lesson with an additional 10-15-minute maths fluency session during the day (4 times a week), additionally, mathematical skills run through many other areas of the curriculum. Each lesson focuses on one clear learning objective which all children are expected to master; extension activities enable those children who grasp the objective rapidly to extend their learning by exploring it at greater depth, often involving reasoning activities. Each lesson can include elements of: fluency, to practice skills; reasoning, to deepen understanding; and problem solving, to apply skills depending on the objective being taught and the understanding of the children. Whole class teaching is differentiated and personalised according to the needs of children at Maytree. Throughout the year Maytree welcomes many new entrants who have had varied or limited prior school experience. We believe that all children should have the same standard of teaching. This means that we use the mastery approach to teach a new concept and children will work with this concept at their level, this will also include collaborative group or partner work.

Each half term there are additional opportunities for pupils and staff to engage specifically with maths challenges and for pupils to develop their perceptions of Mathematics, these are referred to as ‘Maths Challenge Days’. Behaviour demonstrating such things as resilience, collaboration, making connections in learning are celebrated. 

What is teaching for Mastery?

The essential idea behind the mastery approach is that all children have a deep understanding so that future learning continues to build on solid foundations. If the subject is represented using concrete materials, pictorial representations and abstract symbols, it will allow children to visualise maths in varied ways, see connections and to independently explore and investigate a topic. Practical activities and resources offer the children a deeper mathematical understanding of more complex concepts. Providing children with visual representations also offers a scaffold when developing a more robust understanding of maths.

Fluency:

At Maytree, in addition to daily maths sessions pupils have four additional 10-15 minute teacher led fluency sessions over the week to ensure that they develop fluency with, and understanding of, number that is crucial to future success and academic progress more generally. Therefore, fluency sessions focus on:

*Quick recall of facts and procedures

*The flexibility and fluidity to move between different contexts and representations of mathematics.

*The ability to recognise relationships and make connections in mathematics

Representation and Structures:

Mathematical structures are the key patterns and generalisations that underpin sets of numbers – they are the laws and relationships that we want children to spot. Using different representations can help children to ‘see’ these laws and relationships. At Maytree teachers ensure that there is Progression for the use of each of the representations used throughout the nursery and school as well as the representation that should be used in maths in each individual year group. Links between the representations are made as it is key that all representations are used alongside one another with explicit modelling of how they are linked and the concept shown. Concrete resources are used to support the understanding of each representation and the links between them.