Maths

At Leighton Academy, we believe that mathematics is an important subject that helps children make sense of the world around them. Maths is all around us, from telling the time and handling money to solving problems and developing skills that are essential for science, technology and engineering. We want every child to develop a love of maths and to become confident, curious and resilient mathematicians.

From Reception through to Year 6, we provide a high-quality maths education that builds children's understanding step by step. We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Framework in Reception and the National Curriculum in Years 1 to 6. To support our teaching, we use the White Rose Maths Scheme of Learning, which breaks learning down into small, manageable steps and helps children develop a secure understanding of key mathematical concepts.

We recognise that some mathematical skills need to be learned before others. For example, children need to understand place value before they can confidently add and subtract larger numbers. Likewise, a strong understanding of addition helps children when they move on to multiplication. By carefully planning learning in this way, we help children build strong mathematical foundations that will support them throughout their education.

Our maths curriculum is designed to provide a broad range of learning experiences. Alongside developing strong number skills, children explore areas such as shape, measure, statistics and geometry throughout the year. This variety helps children see the connections between different areas of mathematics and understand how maths can be applied in real-life situations.

Through our teaching for mastery approach, we aim for all children to:

• Develop fluency in mathematical methods and facts.
• Reason mathematically and explain their thinking.
• Solve problems with confidence and resilience.
• Make connections between different areas of mathematics.
• Enjoy maths and develop a positive attitude towards the subject.

The sections below provide more information about the intent, implementation and impact of mathematics at our school. You will also find information about what your child will learn in each year group, as well as useful documents and resources to support learning at home.

The aim of our mathematics curriculum is to build long-lasting learning through the progressive acquisition of knowledge and skills. We want our pupils to become confident, competent and independent mathematicians, who are able to build a deep conceptual understanding of maths and its interrelated connectiveness, so they can apply their learning in different situations. We aim to develop children’s ability to articulate, discuss and explain their thinking using appropriate mathematical vocabulary.

Our maths curriculum is achievable for all. Pupils are taught through whole-class interactive teaching, where the focus is on all pupils working together on the same lesson content at the same time. This ensures that all children can master concepts before moving to the next part of the curriculum sequence, allowing no pupil to be left behind. If a pupil fails to grasp a concept or procedure, this is identified quickly and early intervention ensures the pupil is ready to move forward with the whole class in the next lesson. Although the teaching of the concepts is the same for all, the outcomes in terms of application may be different.

In our mathematics teaching, we aim to instil the mindset that everyone can do maths and that maths is for everyone. Mistake-friendly classrooms help children recognise the power mistakes have on our learning. Mistakes also support our pupils in developing resilience and inquisitiveness within the maths curriculum.

We teach our maths curriculum through the use of White Rose Maths schemes of learning. White Rose Maths is a whole-class mastery programme that supports all pupils to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, to be able to reason and to solve problems. The scheme embraces these National Curriculum aims, and provides guidance to help pupils to become:

Visualisers – the CPA approach is used to help pupils understand mathematics and to make connections between different representations.

Describers – there is a great emphasis on mathematical language and questioning so pupils can discuss the mathematics they are doing, and so support them to take ideas further.

Experimenters – as well as being fluent mathematicians, we want pupils to love and learn more about mathematics.

Lesson sequence:
We refer to Rosenshine's Ten Principles of Instruction and the EEF's 5-a-day principles to support us in designing individual lessons. In a typical maths lesson, you will see:

• Flashback 4: Each lesson begins with four quick questions, which support fluency in the key number facts, and allows children to recap prior learning. This constant and daily practice reinforces one of Rosenshine’s strands of reviewing material: crucial for storing knowledge in long-term memory.
• Explicit instruction: Every lesson will take children through worked examples and guided practice, before the children apply what they have learnt independently. If a child is struggling, teachers use the assessment for learning, to support these pupils during the lesson.  
• Modelling cognitive and metacognitive strategies: Teachers model their own thinking to support pupils in developing their own metacognitive and cognitive strategies.
• Independent Practice: Children work independently, answering questions in their maths books. Sometimes, children may need more varied fluency practice before tackling the more in-depth questions or a challenge to go deeper: these are created by the teacher, using NCETM and WRM resources. 

What else we do:

As well as following the White Rose scheme of learning, we subscribe to TT Rockstars. This platform provides children with the opportunity to practise key facts provides children with a platform to practise and memorise their multiplication tables. Teachers reinforce how times tables (and being able to recall them fluently) can support other learning.

When they leave each phase, learners have the knowledge, skills and vocabulary necessary to progress to the next stage of their learning. As a result of high-quality teaching, learning makes sustained progress in mathematics and develops the competence to reason and problem solve confidently and efficiently.