Maths Curriculum

Intent

By the end of Year 6, we want all of our pupils to at least achieve the objectives set out in the 2014 National Curriculum and we strive to offer opportunities to develop skills above and beyond this: we want all our pupils to be able to apply their knowledge and understanding in real-life and practical situations. In order to achieve this, weappropriately support those that need additional interventions and aim to help as many children as possible to build on their successes in Key Stage One and attain ‘Greater Depth’. Our curriculum is carefully designed and mapped out to ensure that our pupils acquire the knowledge and skills required in a sequential and progressive manner. It is regularly reviewed and adapted so that it is relevant to the needs of our pupils and reflects the world they live in.

Within the curriculum, there is a focus on the acquisition of key skills and knowledge which empowers the pupils to successfully deal with problems that require a mathematical solution in both academic and in real-life and practical situations. In line with our Thinking Schools status, we advocate the use of a P4C based approach to solving problems in maths – see appendix 4.

We expect that during their time at Oaklands Junior the students will have acquired a range of strategies and methods to solve calculations involving the four operations, including formal written methods. Through use of metacognition, students will be able to discuss and explain their strategies, leading to a deeper understanding of the number system. In addition, children will be supported to develop rapid recall of knowledge fundamental to using and applying their maths skills in real life situations. This will include practical work, such as cooking in D&T, taking measurements in science and outdoor measuring in maths lessons.

At the end of Key Stage 2, our intention is that all pupils will have developed resilience in maths learning, as well as an enjoyment of it, through a challenging scheme of work, which will enable them to be able to manipulate maths skills, using prior knowledge of key facts including accurate recall of standard units of measure, properties of shape and common formulae.

Many of these skills and ways of learning tie in particularly well with our ‘Thinking School’ philosophy, our ‘Personal Development curriculum’ and our ‘Oaklands’ Mindset’, for example challenge, resilience, communication, enjoyment. Furthermore, the development of these skills and learning behaviours will provide an ideal foundation for continuing the development of their maths skills in Key Stage 3 and beyond. During lessons, we aim to create links between their learning in maths situations they may encounter outside of school and later in life– for example using a timetable, managing money or measuring using standard units.

Implementation

Teaching and Learning

The teaching of maths is undertaken on a daily basis, typically by the class teacher with the support of the class Teaching Assistant (TA). Teaching follows the 2014 National Curriculum and we use a range of sources for our material, including, but not exclusively, the Target Your Maths scheme, Classroom Secrets resources and CGP Plus websites.

The lesson plans are designed to be up to 60 minutes in length and are planned as a sequence of lessons introducing, developing and mastering skills and knowledge. The lessons are designed to be progressive and build on prior learning. They also include activities and teaching for supporting the less able and extending the more able.

The lesson activities are challenging, varied and interactive and encourage the development in the application of maths skills throughout the curriculum. This includes measurement in Science experiments and Design & Technology, a sense of time in History and Music as well as scale in Geography as a few examples. Moreover, following some ‘Money Heroes’ training, we implemented some ‘projects’ that are aimed at improving the children’s understanding of money and financial ‘sense’. These include an enterprise project for each year group at the Christmas fair, as well as children volunteering to make and sell items to raise funds for our PTA and the school council deciding where some spending is allocated.

With the identified need to have a firm grasp of key knowledge and skills, we have introduced regular retrieval practice across the school. This ensures that all key areas are regularly revisited by children. The spacing model, developed by Hermann Ebbinghaus, shows clearly the effectiveness of this regular revisiting of information. Each half-term, to help children learn key foundational knowledge (such as minutes in an hour, grams in a kilogram, months of the year etc), ‘Key maths facts’ tests are completed and then sent home to practice. In Lower key Stage 2, all children use the ‘Ashley Downs’ times tables curriculum and chanting to assist them with them learning their tables. Furthermore, all children have access to Times Tables Rock Stars to assist in their learning of key multiplication and division facts.

A complete list of the Learning Objectives broken down by year group can be found in the appendices.

Marking and Assessment

When marking, teachers use Next Step codes and marking acronyms in order to help identify areas for improvement as well as focussing on objectives that the children have achieved. NS codes vary from lesson to lesson and marking acronyms are clearly displayed in every class as are ‘Presentation boards’.

It is expected that formative assessment takes place in every lesson and this then informs the planning and teaching of subsequent lessons. Teachers regularly update the ‘Oaklands’ Assessment System’ which records pupils’ attainment against objectives in maths and spreadsheets of results in weekly times tables and half-term ‘Key facts’ tests. Assessment is a combination of formative assessment during maths sessions and formal maths tests (NFER and Headstart).

Interventions and Support

As well as whole class teaching, maths-focussed interventions take place in every year group at Oaklands Junior School, both inside and outside of the class, including the use of the ‘Plus One’ and ‘Power of two’ support tools and times tables intervention groups. At Oaklands Junior School, we invest a significant part of our budget in Teaching Assistants, with every year group having two full-time TAs. They are treated as equals and are regularly invited to staff meetings and training sessions. A significant number are HLTAs and most of the TAs have been in the school for a number of years. This level of availability, training and experience helps us to run regular interventions to help children make better progress. 

Beyond the classroom

As well as Maths lessons, we attend various Maths Challenges in most year groups. Furthermore, selected Year 5 & 6 children are also given the opportunity to sit the Primary Mathematics Challenge in the autumn term and the Junior Maths Challenge in the summer term. Moreover, Year 3 & 4 selected children take part in the First Mathematics Challenge. These events have always been great successes, both engaging pupils and staff across the school. All of these opportunities create a positive, stimulating environment around the subject, while at the same time providing challenge for more able pupils.

Recently, raising awareness of the mastery curriculum at Oaklands has been a key area of development. This was the result of an analysis of recent SATs results, which led us to the conclusion that such an approach not only married perfectly with our Thinking Schools philosophy, but would also help to improve our pupils’ reasoning skills. To this end, there have been several training sessions, including ones led by a Primary Mastery Specialist from the NCETM Mobius Maths Hub and The Corvus Primary Improvement Team. Moreover, the maths subject leader and another teacher are currently taking part in a NCETM Embedding Maths Mastery Work Group and are starting to adapt teaching in the school to have a more mastery focus. An example of this is the now wider use of concrete resources and pictorial representations across year groups, the increase in the number of ‘reasoning-focussed’ lessons and including reasoning activities in most lessons. Following advice from the NCETM Mobius Maths Hub, we are approaching this embedding of mastery teaching with a ‘evolution not revolution’ philosophy. 

We are also currently working on improving links with our infants’ feeder school, who are on the same NCETM Mastery Group, in order to look at progression in our curricula and support the children more during their time in both schools.

In addition, the headteacher and maths subject leader have presented to parents on several occasions, with the intention of improving understanding in the parent community. The four pillars model in Appendix 5 outlines the crucial areas in which parents are most encouraged to support their child’s learning. It is expected that, by parents having a clear understanding of how a strong grasp of the fundamentals supports deeper understanding of maths and greater confidence and competence in applying their knowledge. This is being further developed with instructional videos related to these four pillars being added to the school website, as well as ‘workshops’ being offered to parents by Mr Lee, the maths subject leader.

In order to support our children’s learning, regular maths homework is set in all year groups. This includes times tables practice, worksheets and on-line activities.

A number of years ago, a termly ‘Pride’ award was introduced to raise standards and highlight the importance of presentation and always doing your best: each teacher picks one child who has shown particular pride in their work. This and the ‘Give me 5’ (5 key things for the children to remember in their work) initiative were in direct response to a perception at the time that the children’s presentation skills were not at the required standard. In 2020, we also introduced a termly progress award for one child in the school who has made accelerated progress in their maths work.

The Christmas Fayre used to only have an ‘enterprise’ focus with each year group making and selling a product to their peers. Now some of the games also involve other mathematical thinking such as estimating objects in a jar and estimating the amount of profit made during the fayre.

Subject Leadership and Monitoring

In order to understand the picture of maths at Oaklands Junior School, Mr Lee (Maths Subject Lead) and the SLT conduct regular learning walks, book looks and planning scrutinies.

In the last few years, Corvus Learning Trust appointed a Primary School Development Lead who is charged with overseeing maths and English across the three trust schools in the primary phase. Mr Lee has worked closely with our MAT’s school development team and established links with schools within The Corvus Trust, including our local secondary school, which have enabled us to share good practices, undertake staff training and participate in moderation exercises.

Regular maths focussed training has also taken place in staff meetings, as well as frequent opportunities to discuss what is working well and what challenges we face. One of our key strengths as a staff, both classroom-based and at a senior level, is the fact that we have a very open and honest working relationship which enables us to support and challenge each other in our pedagogy, as well as openly discussing current and potential future practices.

Impact

At the end of Year 6, Oaklands Junior school children:

  • Are able to apply their knowledge and understanding in real-life and practical situations.
  • Have the key skills and knowledge which empowers them to successfully deal with problems that require a mathematical solution.
  • Use the ‘Think. Commit. Justify. Reflect’ process to solve problems.
  • Have a range of strategies and methods to solve calculations involving the four operations, including formal written methods.
  • Are able to discuss and explain their strategies, leading to a deeper understanding of the number system.
  • Have developed rapid recall of knowledge fundamental to using and applying their maths skills in real life situations.
  • Are able to instantly recall times tables facts (multiplication and division) up to 12 x 12 and apply this accurately and confidently.

Children at Oaklands with Special Educational Needs are supported through interventions and adapted tasks and make good progress with their learning.

The impact of our implementation can be monitored in a number of ways: through learning walks and lesson observations; examples of children’s work; moderation meetings (both internally and with our cluster schools); planning scrutiny; pupil voice surveys; parent surveys and teacher assessments (both summative and formative).

Impact is evidenced by:

  • Lesson plans indicate which activity is an opportunity to assess progress and is linked to the KS2 targets.
  • A teacher assessment grid is provided to record attainment of each target for each skill in each year group and to track progress.
  • The completed activities in the accompanying workbooks gather evidence of children’s attainment against the curriculum targets.
  • Evidence of mental mathematics activities can be gathered by making recordings of the suggested activities in the lesson plans or by simply asking children to perform and explain calculations.
  • Children self-assess their progress at the end of each section of work using a learning line system and comment on their grasp of the new knowledge. In addition, there is space for teachers to provide a written response.
  • Data from weekly times tables tests are used to track progress in knowing all multiplication and division facts up to 12 x 12. For children who complete the times tables tests, ‘Challenge tests’ are provided which give them an opportunity to apply their knowledge and understanding.
  • Scores from the Government ‘Multiplication Tables Check’ and our internal times tables tests are used to analyse children’s knowledge of multiplication facts.  
  • Based on the evidence of the above-mentioned records of achievement and progress, teachers can inform parents/guardians of this, using report statements which relate to the expected targets of each year group under the headings ’Working Towards’, ‘Working At’ and ‘Working Above’ the expected standard for the year group. If a child is not working on Age Related Objectives, they are given the heading ‘Working Below’.
  • The use of the ‘transition document’ is encouraged to relay information to feeder secondary schools about prior mathematical learning.

How do we define success?

  • The fundamental impact of our intent and implementation is that pupils know more and are able to do more. The positive results of pupils learning can then be seen in the standards they achieve.
  • Attainment gaps between various groups are progressively and quickly reduced until eliminated.
  • End of key stage results in line at least with national and ideally with local authority averages.
  • Children make expected or better progress during an academic year. This is defined as 3 or more APS points progress in an academic year, as evidenced in the Oaklands Assessment System
  • Pupil voice:
    • Evidence in knowledge
    • Evidence in skills
    • Breadth and depth of knowledge and skills
    • Attitude to maths is positive
  • Next steps for Maths are clearly defined based on evaluation of the most current data.

    Next Steps

    As a school, our next steps are shared with all staff and sufficient training is provided to meet these targets. This academic year, our priority is focussing on improving the teaching of reasoning and problem solving and working towards integrating more elements of the mastery approach into our pedagogy.

    We have allocated staff meetings to support the development of this subject for both the teachers and Teaching Assistants. Furthermore, the Maths Subject Leader has continued to partake in a ‘Embedding maths mastery’ course and three more Teaching Assistants are taking part in the ‘The SKTM Primary Teaching Assistants Maths Mastery Programme this academic year (which means that the majority of the class TAs will have completed this course by the end of 2025-26). This CPD has enabled the Maths Lead and the SLT to look at the current Oaklands’ maths curriculum, how it could be developed and improved, and what new pedagogy could be adopted by the school to improve the pupils’ outcomes. As part of this process, we have continued to develop greater links with our Infants school as they are also attending the course.

    Appendices