Arunside Primary School

The children at Arunside school have a passion for Maths and enjoy using the skills and knowledge that they have learnt to solve increasingly challenging mathematical problems.

Throughout lessons, children develop their fluency, reasoning and problem-solving skills, in a variety of different contexts, carefully building on previous learning. This solid foundation allows them to become resilient and deductive learners when facing more complex challenges.

Maths lessons at Arunside are planned carefully to build on the children’s prior knowledge and provide them with increasingly complex challenges, allowing them to make significant progress in their learning. The spiral curriculum, through revisiting, allows the children to deepen their understanding of these core skills and apply them to other areas of their learning.

From EYFS to Year 6, the children use many different concrete and pictorial representations to support and deepen their mathematical understanding before moving in to the abstract.

At Arunside, our spiral curriculum is carefully designed to allow children to develop a deeper understanding of the core mathematical concepts over time.

Teaching and Learning

Teachers use a wide range of resources in all areas of mathematical learning to develop the children’s fluency, reasoning and problem-solving skills. At the beginning of a new topic, the children are provided with the mathematical vocabulary that they will use, which is regularly revisited and displayed on the maths working wall. These show the sequence of learning that the children have followed throughout each mathematical strand to reach their end goal and highlight any misconceptions that may have arisen during the learning.

Children’s fluency is developed through practising key skills, repeating, reinforcing and revising through starter activities and our spiral curriculum. Children are given time to practice their calculation strategies and evaluate the effectiveness of their chosen methods. Investigative tasks are designed to explore Maths and develop their own ideas, justifying and proving their answers. Children work both collaboratively and independently when solving problems, which requires communication, persevere and helps to develop their resilience.

Our Calculation Policy allows for a seamless transition between year groups, ensuring that the approach and language we use to teach maths in each year group is consistent and representative of modern methodologies.

Teachers are provided with regular CPD to ensure that they are using the latest maths guidance and teaching strategies. This provides the children at Arunside with the most up-to-date and current teaching methods and research.

Learning in school is further developed and supported by carefully planned home learning. Here, children have access to a variety of different online platforms, including MyMaths and TT Rockstars, which they enjoy using both in school and at home.

Assessment

Regular assessment in maths is crucial to allow the children to work at an appropriate level, allowing all to achieve and to provide appropriate challenge.

During maths lessons, the children use peer and self-assessment to reflect on their own learning and correct their work, having a clear understanding of their own misconceptions. In order to provide excellent provision for every child at Arunside, teachers continuously monitor children’s progress, through marking of books, precise questioning and summative and formative assessment. Any gaps in knowledge that are identified during daily assessment are targeted, ensuring that every child is ready for the next stage in their learning.

The children at Arunside thoroughly enjoy maths lessons and thrive from a new and complex challenge. They are resilient learners who can use their prior learning to make decisions on appropriate methods and resources to solve challenging problems.

Through the delivery of our Maths curriculum in school, Arunside is considered to be in the well above average category for progress and in the top 10% in the country. From our last statutory assessment, at the end of KS1, 84% of children achieved age related expectations, with 22% of children working at greater depth. Similarly, at the end of KS2, 80% of children achieve age related expectations, with 57% of children working at greater depth.

All this data demonstrates that children from Arunside develop into well-rounded mathematicians with the knowledge and understanding necessary for the next stage of their education.