Maths

Intent

Our intent at Eaton Valley, is to develop a deep understanding, confidence and competence in Maths for all pupils. A culture that produces strong, secure learning with real progress. We take the mastery approach to Maths teaching by following the White Rose Maths motto of ‘Everyone Can Do Maths: Everyone Can!’ and there is no such thing as anyone who can’t do Maths. We aim to give children the right support, guidance and resources so that all children can become confident and competent in Maths and no child is left to fall behind.

As we prove this to children, we are creating happy, resilient mathematicians who relish a challenge. We also aim to develop children’s grown mindset when tackling number problems and maths concepts. We understand the importance of Maths in everyday life and, with this in mind, the purpose of Mathematics at Eaton Valley is to build children’s cultural capital enabling them to be independent thinkers, reasoners and problem solvers.

Implementation

At Eaton Valley, we follow the White Rose Scheme of work. This scheme maps out the topics throughout each year group into blocks. The White Rose Scheme shows clear progression between the year groups, but it is also a cumulative curriculum, meaning that once a topic is covered, it is met many times again in other contexts. Each block of knowledge is divided into small learning steps and together these small steps cover all the curriculum content the children need to learn. By learning Maths in small, related chunks, children will remember more.

Our lessons at Eaton Valley focus on the three main elements to Maths in the National Curriculum; to be fluent, to reason and to problem-solve. All children will be exposed to these three areas throughout their Maths lessons, by using an enabling and extending approach. The majority of the children are working on the age-related content for their year group and live marking is used to indicate which children need a follow up intervention in the afternoon. Children are working on their retention of previous knowledge through the use of Flashback 4. These are used as starters in lessons to assess the children on something they learnt last lesson, last week, last term and last year.

Arithmetic is also a strong focus at Eaton Valley. We give the children 10 arithmetic questions on a weekly basis and the results are recorded via a spreadsheet. This enables teachers to identify children who are struggling on different areas of their arithmetic knowledge and therefore interventions can be put in place. Assessment for learning is used a day to day basis at Eaton Valley through the use of questioning, modelling, live marking and may other approaches. In addition to this, we use summative assessments at the end of every block of learning and at the end of every term.

The end of block assessments are used to assess the children’s knowledge on that particular block and this is then used to inform our schools tracking system – Target Tracker. We use the NTS rising stars assessments for the end of term standardised data. These assess children on their arithmetic skills and their reasoning and problem-solving. A standardised score is then given. Throughout lessons we use a concrete-pictorial approach to guide children through their understanding of mathematical processes. The idea behind this is that the children need to see the structure behind the maths and using a range of concrete manipulatives allowes the children to see this. Times tables is an intricate part to Maths.

At Eaton Valley, we want to go further than children just merely being able to recite their times tables. We want all children to be fluent and flexible in their times tables, know communitive facts, inverse and mega and mini facts. Our aim is for all children to leave Year 4 being confident and competent in the recall of their times table facts up to 12 x 12. We follow a Times Table Termly Planner in order for all children to progress in their tables at a steady pace. 

Children are also set homework on a weekly basis at Eaton Valley. This is set via Times Table Rockstars and Mathletics. Certificates and awards in praise assembly are given to children progressing in these online programmes.

Impact