South Failsworth Community Primary School
MATHEMATICS 
Maths at South Failsworth Primary School
Intent
At South Failsworth, we are aware that maths is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering and necessary for financial understanding and most forms of employment. We want to provide our children with opportunities to develop a high level of mathematical understanding required for success in adult life. We believe all pupils can achieve in mathematics and we feel there is no such thing as a ‘maths person’.
We value the importance of children having a high quality maths curriculum that is both challenging and enjoyable. We provide our children with a variety of mathematical opportunities, which will enable them to make the connections in learning needed to establish a greater depth in their learning. We are focused on ensuring children are confident mathematicians who are not afraid to take risks and to fully develop independent learners with inquisitive minds who have secure mathematical foundations and an interest in self-improvement.
Implementation
At South Failsworth, our teachers have a secure subject knowledge and understanding of the curriculum. To support our teachers with the planning and delivery of high quality maths lessons, we use a range of planning resources including those provided by the White Rose Hubs, NCETM and NRICH. All teachers are exposed to high quality CPD to help support their teaching and delivery of mathematics. All of our children are provided with the opportunity, regardless of their ability, to work through fluency, reasoning and problem solving activities.
We use the CPA approach to help give children a deeper understanding of maths.
Concrete resources give the children time to investigate a concept first and then make connections when formal methods are introduced. To support our children’s learning, all classrooms have a range of mathematical resources including Numicon, Cuisennaire rods, place value counters and Base10.
The pictorial stage allows children to demonstrate and sustain their understanding of mathematical concepts and processes. We use the bar model to help pictorially represent problems to children.
The abstract stage runs alongside the concrete and pictorial stage which enables our children to read mathematical statements and show their understanding using concrete resources or pictorial representations.
At South Failsworth, we use the ‘drip feed’ approach. This allows children opportunities across the year to revisit areas of the curriculum to ensure that knowledge is fully embedded. This is carried out through ‘Fluent in Five’ daily sessions. These are questions given to children daily focusing on mental and formal written methods. Times Table Rockstars is a tool used to help support children with their times table facts. Children use this at school and at home. Children really enjoy the challenge of trying to achieve the ‘Rock Hero’ status and when the children achieve this, it is celebrated in an assembly and the children receive a badge which they wear with pride.
Click on the following links for more information about Times Table Rock Stars and Numbots.
One of our Key Skills at South Failsworth is application of maths. From the high quality maths lessons children are exposed to, they are able to transfer the skills and knowledge to other subjects across the curriculum. This will be evident as part of children’s work under the World themes of our curriculum: Where In The World; World Events; World Heroes; Wonderful World; The Wild World and The Natural World.
Through our teaching we continuously monitor children’s progress against the expected attainment for their age. We make formative assessment notes and use these to inform our discussions in termly Pupil Progress Meetings. Teachers update Fisher Family Trust (our school assessment tracker) on a termly basis. The main purpose of all our assessments are to ensure that we are providing high quality provision for all children.
Impact
After the implementation of our maths curriculum, our children will understand the relevance of what they are learning in mathematics and how it links to everyday life. Our children will foster an enjoyment of mathematics and this will be evident from speaking to the children and also the pride that they take in their work. They will not be afraid to take risks and will relish in the challenges that are presented to them. Outcomes will be strong and above the national average in end of key stage testing. There will be evidence of progression within a unit of work in children’s books and from year to year. Within children’s books there will be evidence of varied fluency, reasoning and problem solving and feedback given to children will have a clear impact on their outcomes. Children will show a deeper level of understanding due to the CPA approach which will be used across all areas of maths. Interventions will enable a greater proportion of children to be on track to meet year group expectations or in the case of those working significantly below expectations to make better than expected progress.
Our Maths Curriculum:
Please click on the links below to view our maths curriculum.
Calculation Policies: 
Parents’ Guide to the Maths National Curriculum
At South Failsworth Primary School we aim for all children to be confident and enthusiastic learners in Mathematics. We provide a clear, progressive curriculum to stimulate and challenge our pupils, encouraging children to take risks, learn from misconceptions and apply their learning in a variety of ways.
The National Curriculum outlines that all children should:
- become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice 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.
You can see an overview of what is covered in the curriculum links for each year group below:
YEAR 1 YEAR 2 YEAR 3 YEAR 4 YEAR 5 YEAR 6
Our school has a consistent approach to calculation methods that is based on a progression from using concrete manipulatives (such as counters, cubes or place value counters) to pictorial representation and finally to abstract methods.