Our curriculum aims to develop our pupils’ mathematical understanding by breaking the National Curriculum objectives into smaller steps which develop skills and knowledge to meet the National Curriculum requirements. This enables all pupils to make good progress from their starting points.
Understanding is at the core of our curriculum. Pupils’ often start with gaps in their learning and it is important that their needs are understood but expectations remain high. A Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract approach is used to provide a physical/visual representation of mathematical concepts and problems. This helps to develop their conceptual understanding, teaches different strategies to tackle a problem and provides scaffolds to access concepts which a pupil may feel is beyond their abilities. This in turn develops a pupils confidence and motivation for learning.
It is important that pupils know more than a mathematical procedure, because of this each lesson follows a Fluency, Reasoning, Problem-solving model, which allows for skills practice and challenge in every lesson for every pupil.
Our curriculum follows a spiral model where taught content is revisited within other units, this keeps skills current and develops a pupil’s ability to recall content.
Mathematical vocabulary development is essential to provide the greatest opportunities for success. We focus on this through the teaching of key words and the use of ELKLAN strategies to develop understanding of what these words mean.
It is important that our pupils see the value and purpose of maths in the real world, for this reason we highlight the links to potential careers through talks and lessons, cultural capital and essential life skills (see cultural capital map).
