“Even the hardest puzzles have a solution, Maths – makes your life add up!”

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At Tywardreath School our vision is to create a safe and stimulating environment where all children feel they belong and are able to challenge themselves, take risks and flourish both academically and socially. To develop our children so that they value and respect their own and others individuality, culture and heritage. We are committed to providing a place of excellence with high standards.

To achieve our vision all our children should:

  • Enjoy their primary school years and develop high self-esteem regardless of ‘academic’ ability.
  • Feel safe and secure and have a passion for learning and experience success.
  • Develop perseverance, flexibility, independence in a wide range of learning skills.
  • Be well mannered, respecting themselves, others and the environment.
  • Make a positive contribution to the school and the wider community.
  • Enjoy equal opportunities to succeed
  • Develop lively, inquiring minds and become confident communicators.
  • Experience teaching of the highest quality and develop core skills to a high level.
  • Appreciate the beauty, the diversity of the world and their duty to protect it.

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Intent

At Tywardreath School our Maths curriculum has been developed to ensure that every child has a secure understanding of the foundations and intricacies of mathematics. We believe Mathematics is essential to everyday life, critical to Science, technology, engineering and life beyond school.

Our aspiration is for our children to make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems. Furthermore, our aim is for every child to see themselves as a mathematician – demonstrating a confident attitude. We therefore aim to provide opportunities to reason mathematically, develop an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and form a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.

By entwining calculation, reasoning and problem solving in to a series of lessons, we ensure that secure links are made and that prior knowledge is being assessed and challenged throughout.

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Implementation

Our whole school approach to the teaching and learning of Maths involves the following:

 Practise, Vary, Apply, Challenge

This model will be presented sometimes within a single lesson but mostly throughout a planned sequence of lessons. Evidence is clear within a child’s Maths books.

Practise – During this stage children are given opportunities to practise a skill. 

Vary – When children have secured the practise stage they are given opportunities to explore this skill in a variety of different ways.

Apply – Once fluency has been achieved children are encouraged to apply their understanding in real life contexts.

Challenge – Children are given opportunities to deepen their learning through critical thinking and efficient working.

Fluency Starters

As fluency is a fundamental part of Mathematics, we have placed a great emphasis on children acquiring and recalling basic number facts and times tables. To achieve this we have implemented fluency starters to recap and revisit previous learning at the beginning of each Maths lesson. We build upon the skill development of previous years to ensure progression throughout the school.

Times Tables

At Tywardreath School, we encourage rapid recall of times tables and division facts with verbal and practical demonstration of skills and understanding. There is a focus on using a CPA approach to times tables, following these steps.

  1. Counting in steps.
  2. Using objects as ‘lots’
  3. Repeated addition
  4. Multiplication is commutative
  5. Multiplication is the inverse of division
  6. Fact families
  7. Ordering of multiples introduces
  8. Teach efficient strategies

EYFS ‘One number a week’

We believe focusing on just one number for a week is a great way to encourage children to deepen their understanding of numbers and develop ‘number sense’. Different aspects of a number can be presented alongside each other. For example, aspects of number recognition, number formation, counting, place value, shape and calculation can all be introduced at the same time. 

In Early Years teachers represent numbers individually through focused number of the week activities which encourages children to develop their confidence in exploring and using numbers. Using this number of the week approach also allows for misconceptions to be addressed straight away.

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Impact

The impact of our mathematics curriculum is that children understand the relevance of what they are learning in relation to real world concepts. We have fostered an environment where Maths is fun and it is ‘okay to be wrong’ because the journey to finding an answer is most important. Our maths books are evidenced with a range of activities showing clear progression through PVAC cycle. Our feedback and interventions are supporting children to strive to be the best mathematicians they can be ensuring a greater proportion of children are on track. Children ‘have a go’ and independently choose the equipment they need to help them to learn along with the strategies they think are best suited to each problem. Children are developing skills in confidently communicating and reasoning about Mathematical concepts.