Intent

At Merrylands Primary School and Nursery, we believe that Mathematics teaches children how to make sense of the world around them through developing their ability to calculate, reason and solve problems. It enables children to understand relationships and patterns in both numbers and space in their everyday lives. We view Mathematics as a creative and highly interconnected subject essential to everyday life, science, technology and engineering, and necessary for most forms of employment.

Through the teaching of Mathematics, we aim:

 • to promote enjoyment of learning through practical activity, exploration and discussion

 • to provide children with the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately to a range of mathematical problems   and situations

• to promote confidence and competence with numbers and the number system

• to develop the ability to solve problems through decision-making and reasoning in a range of contexts

 • to develop a practical understanding of the ways in which information is gathered and presented

 • to explore features of shape and space, and develop measuring skills in a range of contexts

 • to understand the importance of Mathematics in everyday life

Implementation

Mathematics at Merrylands is taught in blocks throughout the year, so that children can achieve depth in their learning. The programmes of study for Mathematics are set out weekly and teachers follow the small step sequence of planning from the White Rose Primary scheme, with additional resources, to enhance the children’s learning. The teaching of Mathematics starts in Nursery with the Master the Curriculum scheme before moving onto the White Rose programme of study in Reception.

Lessons reinforce skills, challenge pupils’ reasoning and develop their problem-solving expertise. Children consolidate the skills they are learning whilst developing their reasoning skills and are provided with further problem-solving opportunities in which they are required to justify and explain their learning using appropriate mathematical language and terms. Through the use of concrete resources, the concepts of subitising and conservation of numbers are secured. The pupils’ understanding is extended through relating the ‘concrete’ stage to the ‘pictorial’ step. Through using pictures and visual representations, the pupils develop a deep understanding of numbers and mathematical concepts. Relating this to numbers and mathematical operations involves the ‘abstract’ stage in which the concrete (practical resources) along with the pictorial representations relate to the numbers we see in calculations.

During our daily Mathematics lessons, we encourage children to ask as well as answer questions. They have the opportunity to use a wide range of resources, such as number lines, number squares, digit cards, place value counters, base ten and Numicon. ICT is used in mathematics lessons for modelling ideas and methods. Wherever possible, we encourage children to apply their learning to everyday situations. We also encourage the use of mathematical language for children to explain their ideas and independently apply the concept to new problems in unfamiliar situations.   In addition to daily Mathematics lessons, children will also have a weekly Times Tables lesson focusing on quick recall of number facts and strategies linked to this area of learning. This explicit teaching of timetables helps to prepare the children for the multiplication check at the end of Year 4 as well as supports learning throughout the primary phase.

Impact

Our approach to teaching Mathematics in primary school enables all children to make good progress from their starting point.  Children enjoy the opportunity to use practical equipment and move to more abstract methods of working when solving problems.  Feedback is given to children within lessons regarding their learning and termly tests and teacher assessment is used to assess the children’s understanding and progress made within each unit of study. Question analysis tasks are used to understand gaps in learning and inform future teaching.

The subject is monitored regularly to measure the impact of the Mathematical curriculum content, design and delivery and the outcomes of this monitoring are used to drive forward next steps within the subject.