Anthony Bek Primary School

Numeracy – intent, implementation and impact

Intent

Maths is a skill we use on a daily basis and is an essential part of everyday life. Therefore, mathematics forms an important part of our broad and balanced curriculum where we endeavour to ensure that children develop an enjoyment and enthusiasm for maths that will stay with them throughout their lives and empower them in future life. We believe that unlocking mathematical fluency is an essential life skill for all learners and is a pre-requisite to being able to reason and solve problems mathematically.

Our aim is to develop a positive culture of deep understanding, confidence and competence in maths that produces strong, secure learning. As a school, we recognise that the key to unlocking the potential in our children is through the development of basic mathematical skills and the understanding of mathematical concepts. We therefore place great emphasis on the use of concrete resources and pictorial representations at all ages, to enable children to fully understand the concepts and principals, when presented with abstract calculations and questions. Our math’s curriculum is progressive; in our Early Years’ setting, children are given opportunities in all areas of the classroom, to develop positive attitudes and interests in mathematics. At KS1, we endeavour to provide a secure understanding of number and the associated relationships which will enable children of KS2 and beyond to solve increasingly sophisticated problems.

Implementation

Through both adult directed tasks and child-initiated exploration of the provision, children in the Early Years’ setting should be confident in counting, recognising patterns, identifying connections and have a deep understanding of numbers to 10 (FS1) and then 20 (FS2).

In the primary setting, every class from Year 1 to Y6 follows the White Rose scheme of learning which is based on the National Curriculum. Lessons may be personalised to address the individual needs and requirements for a class but coverage is maintained. In order to further develop children’s fluency, reasoning and problem-solving, we place an emphasis on the latter questions in White Rose which further develops children’s understanding of a concept and develops links between the various strands of maths topics.

In order to ensure that every minute of the day is utilised to maximise learning potential, we have a Start of Day Activity during register time whereby children are set a maths task to ensure general maths knowledge and fluency are maintained and developed; these may take many forms, for example: arithmetic, specific times tables or several questions about a mixture of maths topics.

Through our teaching, we continuously monitor pupils’ progress against expected attainment for their age, making formative assessment notes where appropriate and using these to inform our teaching. Summative assessments are completed at the end of each term; their results form discussions in bi-annual Pupil Progress Meetings and update our summative school tracker. The main purpose of all assessment is to always ensure that we are providing excellent provision for every child.

Impact

By the end of Year 6, we aspire that a child at Anthony Bek will have developed the ability to reason and solve problems using a range of effective and accurate calculation skills where children understand the process of solving problems and not just ‘doing’. Children will be able to apply these calculation skills and understanding to other areas so they can become confident and resilient problem-solvers with the ability to reason and articulate their ideas mathematically. This will provide them with the necessary skills to become successful at secondary school and further on in life.