Mathematics Vision Statement
“Mathematics is a creative and highly interconnected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. A high-quality mathematics education therefore provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.” National Curriculum, 2014.
At Hopton Church of England Primary Academy, we believe that Mathematics is important because it is in every aspect of life and society: from the ability to measure out ingredients to cook; to being able to problem solve, reason and think critically about finances; to being able to tell the time and much more. To support children on their journey to become confident, articulate mathematicians of society we have adopted a blended mastery and spiral curriculum, which we implement using the White Rose Framework.
We envisage mathematics lessons where all children are encouraged to be mathematically curious, ask questions and make links between ideas and concepts. With practical mathematics, careful questioning and reflective practice, children at Hopton are taught to take an increasing responsibility for their learning, develop their stamina for mathematics and celebrate overcoming challenges.
Our Aims for Mathematics
- To provide children with the mathematical skills they need in order to be successful in other areas of the curriculum and in the wider world.
- To enable all children at Hopton to reach their mathematical potential.
- To develop a positive ‘growth mind set’ towards mathematics, which fosters a sense of excitement and fascination for mathematics.
- To provide well-planned lessons, where children continually build upon the knowledge they have already mastered and are provided with the opportunity to reason and problem solve.
- To develop children’s mathematical thinking, and conceptual understanding, of a topic utilising a concrete, pictorial, abstract (CPA) approach, rather than purely procedural approachs.
- To provide children with the mathematical skills they will need in other areas of the curriculum and in the wider world.
Curriculum Design in Mathematics
At Hopton, we follow the White Rose Mathematics Curriculum long term plan.
White Rose Mathematics is a blended spiral and mastery approach to mathematics. We believe that children should spend longer on a topic to help gain a deeper understanding and make connections across the curriculum. But we also recognise that just spending a good chunk of time on a topic doesn’t mean that all pupils will ‘master’ it the first time they see it, and they may need to see it again and again in different contexts (also called interleaving) and in different years to help them truly develop their understanding.
Our curriculum is designed to support pupils to be able to perform simpler tasks, so they can move on to perform more complex tasks. The curriculum is set out into ‘blocks’ and within each block area there is a series of ‘small steps’, which are sequenced in order of difficulty and dependency. Each lesson is carefully crafted to contain elements of fluency, reasoning and problem-solving. At Hopton, we don’t leave mathematics to chance and each step builds carefully from the previous step building on pupils’ prior knowledge.
We continually strive to overcome children’s barriers and one way we approach this in mathematics is to explicitly teach mathematical vocabulary. Key vocabulary is shared, explained and modelled in mathematics lessons before being revisited throughout a unit of work. Discussion forms a key part of the White Rose curriculum and many of the tasks are designed to facilitate mathematical talk.