Maths

Curriculum Intention

At Hammond Junior School our Mathematics curriculum is ambitious and meets the National Curriculum standards at the end of the key stage. Teachers plan and teach lessons through a maths mastery approach to allow for children to deepen their mathematical understanding by being fluent in the key skills in Maths. They will be confident and have quick recall within factual fluency, will be able to reason mathematically and solve problems by applying their knowledge. All learners will be able to access the curriculum and children will be confident mathematical thinkers by the time they leave Key Staqe 2. The small steps that we have broken our curriculum into enable pupils to deepen their understanding and, as they progress through the curriculum, build and extend their skills and understanding. Regular opportunities for children to consolidate their prior learning will be given to ensure that key skills are embedded.  Children will gain mathematical curiosity where they are motivated to ask questions to enhance their understanding and further deepen their own knowledge and understanding.

Curriculum Implementation

Alongside developing children’s fluency in arithmetic skills, the curriculum requires pupils to reason and think mathematically. Concrete and pictorial representations of mathematics and stem sentences are chosen carefully to help build procedural and conceptual knowledge together. Pupils are supported to deepen their understanding and to make connections between different areas of maths. Independent exercises are structured with great care to build deep conceptual knowledge alongside developing procedural fluency. Our maths lessons combine whole-class teaching, group, paired and independent work. 

At Hammond, we provide opportunities for children to apply their skills and understanding to everyday contexts. Pupils are encouraged to enquire, deepen and explore their understanding through discussions, investigations and open-ended problems. We encourage our children to talk mathematically and explain their thinking using precise vocabulary and generalisations. 

Hammond Junior School is part of a Maths Mastery Hub teaching development group to provide continued professional development. This is then fed through to other teachers following working group sessions to ensure consistency across the delivery of maths. Other CPD opportunities to develop subject knowledge include professional maths discussions with other schools using the NCETM teaching spines and looking at collaborative planning opportunities.

Curriculum Impact

Pupils at Hammond will:

• Have carefully planned opportunities to deepen their understanding

• Be confident, curious and motivated mathematicians

• Ask questions to further develop and deepen their understanding

• Apply prior knowledge to make connections in new learning

• Apply understanding to everyday concepts

The following methods are used to measure the impact:

• Retrieval practice embedded in every lesson

• Ready to progress assessments are used to plan opportunities to determine if children are ready to move on to a new concept or to identify gaps

• Reflective approaches to teaching and learning providing opportunities for all in every lesson

• Regular learning walks, book looks and pupil voice surveys to monitor the teaching of maths

• Termly assessments and subsequently data analysis

What the children say:

“I like maths because it is fun and there are lots of different ways you can learn. We use column addition, cherry models and bar charts.”

“Maths is really, really fun. I like learning times tables - it’s my favourite part of maths.”

“The teachers give us good challenges.”

“The teachers explain it clearly so I know how to answer the questions.”