MATHS

INTENT

At the Berkeley Academy, we STRIVE to do our best and equip all our children with the mathematical knowledge, understanding and skills to embrace life-long learning and achieve their personal best. Our aims are:

• For our children to be successful and proficient mathematicians, who can apply their maths to other contexts, solve problems, fluently recall facts and reason mathematically, justifying their answers with confidence.
• To make maths learning meaningful and applicable which prepares our children for the next phase in their education and ultimately, the world of work.
• To develop children who have positive and enthusiastic attitudes towards maths
• To provide a mastery approach that gives pupils deeper conceptual understanding and makes maths more enjoyable.

IMPLEMENTATION

At The Berkeley, we use the White Rose planning support materials as a basis of our maths lessons from Early Years to Year 6. This enables all children to receive high quality teaching with learning carefully sequenced in order to deepen understanding of key concepts. This is consolidated through regular opportunities to revisit prior learning in order to help them to learn more and remember more. 

Children are taught real life use of Maths and are encouraged to solve problems each day through the use of concrete resources, pictorial representations and abstract thinking. We provide a range of resources to enable them to have a concrete and visual platform on which to build. From this they can work towards developing an understanding of the abstract.

Our Maths curriculum is designed to meet the needs of all our pupils. All children are given appropriate support and those who grasp new concepts quickly are challenged through the use of more advanced puzzles and problems which require them to apply their understanding in a range of ways.

We recognise children need to be taught in a variety of ways and learn a range of methods. They are encouraged to show their working out in a series of ways including calculations, images and as a reasoned explanation. They learn new subject specific vocabulary which helps them to securely grasp new concepts and explain their methods and choices. 

In order to help children to begin comprehending new concepts, an emphasis is placed upon creating hands-on activities through the use of concrete resources such as base ten, numicon, bead strings and place value counters with all teachers trained using the ‘Reddy Made Maths’ approach.  These resources are used throughout the school so that all children are able to visualise the maths that they are learning and can ‘see’ how it works before delving into it further. 

Assessment

Each term, children’s knowledge is assessed through the use of NFER assessments or, in Year 2 and 6, past SATs papers.  Nursery and Reception children’s knowledge and understanding is assessed via continual teacher assessment throughout the term which is then documented on Tapestry.  In addition, children in Years 1-6 are also tested on their mental arithmetic once a week and their basic number skills and speed of number fact recall via ‘2 minute tests’.

Our Maths curriculum provides regular opportunities for children to revisit prior learning. This is often based on question level analysis from previous assessments and helps the children to learn more and remember more.

IMPACT

At The Berkeley , the quality teaching of Maths enables all children to achieve academically when compared with national figures regardless of individual need. The children will:

• Become fluent mathematicians who can recall and apply knowledge independently
• Be able to make connections and see patterns within all areas of maths so that they can then be applied.
• Be able to reason and solve problems by using prior learning.
• Develop resilience and confidence in areas that challenge them
• Develop a life-long learning of Maths
• Create lasting memories of Maths opportunities
• Understand and appreciate the impact individuals have had in Maths