Intent

At Pulham, we are passionate about developing and nurturing a comprehensive knowledge of number and how mathematics is all around us. Maths should be enjoyable, accessible and possible for all. We believe all children have the potential to achieve in Maths and therefore undertake the Maths Mastery approach. This allows all children exposure to maths concepts without limitations and lots of opportunities to deepen their understanding. We want our children to become confident mathematicians, able to use and apply their understanding of a variety of mathematical concepts to solve problems and reason their ideas with accurate mathematical vocabulary in both familiar and unfamiliar contexts. 

Implementation

At Pulham we encourage and nurture a “can do” attitude with Maths and begin this journey with a solid foundation of understanding the concept and value of number, building on this with small manageable steps as they progress through the year and ultimately, their Primary School education. To support this, we follow the White Rose Maths Scheme, developing our learning and approach to become masters of mathematical concepts at each child’s level.

A Typical Daily Maths Lesson:

• 99 Club - 3 minutes to solve individually attained sets of arithmetic questions.
• Prior learning recap to recall previous lesson and this session's objective shared.
• Snappy starter including prior learning of which will be built upon in this session.
• Input from teacher in which the new learning makes links to prior learning as the next step in introduced in small steps. Concepts are explicit and modelled by the teacher using concrete and/or pictoral representations to demonstrate the maths. Models follow an I do, we do, you do rotation to embed methods and understanding.
• Children then spend time applying this to problems independently.
• Learning is then built upon by further teacher input as before further independent application.
• Feedback is given during the lesson where possible.
• Extension activities are provided for those who are ready to deepen their understanding on the session's learning.

Children are taught new mathematical concepts through the CPA method –

Concrete -> Pictoral -> Abstract

Concrete equipment supports a child’s visual understanding and physical representation of a concept, pictoral then builds on this showing the concept with a drawn representation before progressing onto the abstract mathematical representation using numbers, written calculations etc.

We enrich daily Maths lessons with opportunities to apply their learning to solve problems and then reason their ideas using mathematical vocabulary during early morning work as well as deepening their understanding within their lessons.

The children also participate in daily Maths Meetings, quick 10-minute sessions during which we practise times tables, revisit topics and apply their understanding in the form of games and whole class discussions.

Maths Shed is used in class and encouraged at home to develop and further their fluency with quick recall of number facts which create a solid base for and nurture a child’s mathematical confidence.