Mathematics

At Wath Victoria, we follow a mastery approach to maths. This enables the children to become confident when using their maths skills. We do this through encouraging the use of practical resources, pictures and varied representations of problems, as well as through discussing their thinking and reasoning. Children are encouraged to make connections between different areas of mathematics so they are able to make independent decisions when solving problems.

We believe mathematics is an essential life skill. We seek to develop confident and competent children with an enthusiasm for mathematics, who can apply their knowledge and skills across the curriculum and in the outside world. We encourage children to aim high with Maths and this is supported with the use of additional materials that can be used at home. TimesTables Rockstars (KS2 children) and Numbots (KS1 children) are an easy yet effective way for our children to further develop their Maths learning.

We teach children to choose the most effective arithmetic methods in line with their developmental stage. We use our own policy to ensure a clear progression in knowledge and skill from EYFS to Y6 to ensure that by the time children leave us for the next stage of their education they are fluent and confident mathematicians.

As part of this we aim to:

to raise standards in mathematics using the teaching for mastery approach.
to ensure that children have a range of calculation strategies and have independence in choosing the most efficient one when faced with a calculation.
to give children competence and confidence with numbers and measures.
to develop children’s understanding of the number system and its application to real life problems and cross curricular theme links.
to acquire computational skills in order to solve number problems in a variety of contexts using different strategies and building on known facts.
to develop confidence in mathematics shown by an ability to express their ideas fluently using correct mathematical vocabulary.

We use the NCETM (National Centre of Excellence in the Teaching of Maths) to support our teaching of mathematics and our staff are part of local maths hub work groups and CPD groups to ensure that we are looking at how to use best practice in current maths teaching in our classrooms. Our teaching progression in all maths strands follows the NCETM progression maps, examples of which can be seen below:

NCETM progression map - place value

NCETM progression map - addition and subtraction

NCETM progression map - multiplication