Mathematics

Intent, Implementation and Impact Statement

“The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.” Galileo Galilei  

INTENT 

Mathematics is a creative and highly inter-connected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. It is essential in everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. At the British Section, our high-quality mathematics education therefore provides a foundation for understanding the world; the ability to reason mathematically; an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject. 

The aims of teaching mathematics in our school are to ensure that all pupils: 

• 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.

Mathematics is an interconnected subject in which pupils need to be able to move fluently between representations of mathematical ideas. Although the programmes of study detailed in the national curriculum are, by necessity, organised into apparently distinct domains, pupils at the British Section are overtly encouraged to make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems. Teachers at The British Section also use every relevant subject to develop pupils’ mathematical fluency. Confidence in numeracy and other mathematical skills is a precondition of success across the full national curriculum. 

IMPLEMENTATION 

“Everyone can do maths: everyone can!” 

At the British Section, we want pupils to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, to be able to reason and to solve problems. Influenced, inspired and informed by the work of leading researchers and practitioners across the world, our mathematics curriculum is based on the award-winning schemes of learning written by White Rose Education. At the heart of these schemes is mathematics mastery, an approach that reinforces and strengthens our whole-school ‘learning powers’ and ‘character virtues’ philosophy, thus sparking a positive, growth mindset towards mathematics in teachers, parents and pupils. Our curriculum embraces the National Curriculum aims, and provides guidance to help pupils to become: 

Visualisers – we use the CPA approach to help pupils understand mathematics and to make connections between different representations. 

Describers – we place great emphasis on mathematical language and questioning so pupils can discuss the mathematics they are doing, and so support them in taking ideas further. 

Experimenters – as well as being fluent mathematicians, we want pupils to love and learn more about mathematics. 

To learn mathematics effectively, some things have to be learned before others, e.g. place value needs to be understood before working with addition and subtraction; addition needs to be learnt before looking at multiplication (as a model of repeated addition). We therefore put emphasis on number skills first, carefully ordered, throughout our curriculum. For other topics, the order isn’t as crucial, e.g. Shapes and Statistics need to come after number, but don’t depend on each other. We try to mix these so pupils have as wide a variety of mathematical experiences as possible across each term and year. 

The national curriculum for mathematics reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. The quality and variety of language that pupils hear and speak are key factors in developing their mathematical vocabulary and presenting a mathematical justification, argument or proof. At the British Section, pupils are therefore assisted in making their thinking clear to themselves as well as others, and our teachers ensure that pupils build secure foundations by using discussion to probe and remedy their misconceptions. 

IMPACT 

By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified in the relevant programme of study. The expectation is that the majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace. However, decisions about when to progress are always based on the security of pupils’ understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly are challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems before any acceleration into new content. Those who are not yet sufficiently fluent with earlier material are supported to consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on. 

We monitor the understanding and progress, and impact of our mathematics curriculum through the following approaches: 

• in-class summative end-of-block and end-of-term assessments; 
• images and videos of learning opportunities; 
• conduct pupil surveys to assess attitudes towards learning, how highly pupils’ work is valued and celebrated, and how much pupils are encouraged to become independent learners; 
• wider opportunities to celebrate mathematics across the school; 
• monitor planning at all levels, i.e. curriculum map, schemes of learning, units of work, weekly plans; 
• carry out learning walks to evaluate teaching and learning in mathematics across the school; 
• observe lessons to determine teaching and learning strengths, knowledge and the strategies used to promote pupils’ interest and enthusiasm; 
• scrutinise pupils’ books and classroom displays; 
• analyse assessment and tracking data to measure progress against pupils’ individual targets; and 
• annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.