Maths at Burradon Community Primary School has been built on one of our core values:

'Persevere and be resilient – be the best you can.'

Our Vision: 

“At Burradon, all children will have a positive attitude towards mathematics, becoming fluent, confident and resilient mathematicians, who are equipped with the skills to succeed in, and beyond, their school years.” 

Intent

The intent of our mathematics curriculum is to provide learning which is accessible to all and will maximise the development of every child’s academic achievement. It is important that our children enjoy learning about mathematics and experience success in the subject; are curious about maths in school and the world around them; and recognise the importance of the development of their maths skills to their participation in wider society.

Our Key Principles:

• We believe maths is a subject that all children can do.
• We believe that maths should be fun, engaging and rewarding for all learners.
• We embed fluency, reasoning and problem solving at the heart of our curriculum.
• We strive for all children to become competent mathematical thinkers, confident in making connections.
• We support children in their understanding through a variety of representations, including concrete, pictorial and abstract.

Implementation

Maths lessons are taught based on the mastery approach. The curriculum is mapped out using the White Rose Maths Hub scheme of work to ensure coverage and progression of skills.  Topics are taught in extended blocks to support mastery of concepts, which are carefully sequenced to ensure the retention of skills and knowledge.  

What maths looks like at Burradon:

• We follow a mastery approach to the teaching of mathematics.
• As a staff, we have high expectations of children and a belief that all children can succeed.
• We promote a positive, can-do mindset that expects to learn from mistakes.
• We carefully design lessons to ensure all children access rich, problem solving tasks, applying the mastery principles of coherence, variation, representation and structure, mathematical thinking and fluency.
• We provide enjoyable and engaging tasks that build skills and allow misconceptions to be diagnosed
• We craft lessons to provide regular opportunities for children to talk mathematically, using accurate mathematical vocabulary and stem sentences.
• We make use of concrete manipulatives and pictorial representations that help learners to uncover and articulate mathematical structure.
• We provide opportunities for greater depth of understanding and challenge, primarily through problem solving and reasoning activities.
• We plan daily mental maths sessions carefully to support fluency in a range of mental strategies and retention of key calculation strategies and key vocabulary.
• We use assessment for learning to determine whether children require further consolidation through guided or independent practice.
• We create explicit links to maths in science and foundation subjects.
• We use Times Table Rockstars to support retention of multiplication facts.
• We access CPD as a staff to ensure confidence in the delivery of the mastery approach.

Great North Maths Hub - Teacher Research Group

As part of our whole school development in teaching for mastery, teachers in Year 2 and Year 5, last year,  joined a Teaching for Mastery Work Group run by the Great North Maths Hub. The intent of this 2-year programme is to gain high quality professional development, and the opportunity to work closely with other schools developing teaching for mastery. This academic year a teacher from EYFS and Year 6 are part of Sustaining Teaching Mastery programme run by the Great North Hub This will ensure quality maths teaching and learning is provided for all our learners, allowing children to acquire a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject.

Maths Parent Workshops

It was great having parents and carers in school to find out all about our new mastery approach to maths. The children really enjoyed having the opportunity to show their amazing maths skills to their family!

Maths House Morning

The whole school had a fantastic maths morning focused around the book 'How Big is a Million' by Anna Milbourne. All of our activities linked to the powers of 10 and gave us the chance to show how hard we have been working on our school value 'perseverance and resilience' to help us solve problems.