At Aldersbrook we would like Mathematics to be meaningful and engaging so that all pupils have access to learning in every lesson and feel involved and confident in each of the units and all the skills they are learning. Our Mastery approach builds on children’s knowledge and skills – allowing them to know more and remember more. We intend for pupils to be curious and independent by making rich connections across mathematical ideas, develop their understanding of the world, know the purpose behind their learning and apply their knowledge to their everyday lives, and have the ability to reason mathematically to solve increasingly complex problems.

 The national curriculum for mathematics aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practise with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
• Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language
• Can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.

The Mathematics curriculum at Aldersbrook builds on previous knowledge and skills, allowing children to revisit units in order to increase understanding and allow them to feel confident about accessing their new learning. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly are challenged through rich and sophisticated problems to broaden and deepen their mathematical understanding. The knowledge and skills that we teach are taken from the National Curriculum are presented on progression documents to encourage teachers to use it for: assessing children’s ability; identify gaps in learning; ensure appropriate curriculum coverage and delivery of a breadth of study to ensure children are given the best chance of progressing and to master the unit of learning.

At Aldersbrook, we begin our daily lessons with recalling times tables and then Arithmetic at the start of every lesson. During arithmetic pupils have 6 minutes to complete the questions, these questions are on addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fraction and percentages. This is to build fluency and precision in these areas and to think about numbers differently. Our aim is to ensure that the three core areas of the national are covered in all our lessons: fluency, reasoning and problem-solving.

Have a look below at our Progression of Skills grids for each area of study in Maths