Maths

Mathematics

At Grove Vale, we follow a Mastery approach which is personalised to the core values of our school. As per the NCETM, mastering maths means pupils acquiring a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject. The phrase ‘teaching for mastery’ describes the elements of classroom practice and school organisation of the curriculum that combine to give pupils the best chances of mastering maths.

Intent

At Grove Vale we aim to inspire all children to reach their full academic potential. In mathematics this means ensuring an ambitious curriculum that is fully inclusive of all children which:

Ensures children at Grove Vale are emerged in a rich and high-quality math curriculum, enabling freedom to be creative.
Gives children the chance to develop the power of resilience by believing in themselves when being faced with mathematical challenges.
Encourages children have opportunities to be curious, making connections between mathematical processes and the world around them.
Develops children as independent learners, having self-drive to be ambitious by being a part of progressing and challenging themselves and not being afraid to take risks.
Makes sure fluency, problem solving and reasoning is developed sequentially to ensure children have a strong foundation to build upon and achieve mastery.

As a result of their learning in mathematics and problem solving across the curriculum children will:

Show quick recall of mathematical facts and procedures.
Be engaged in a risk-free math learning environment where
Confidently and flexibly use, embed and link mathematical skills and processes across a range of contexts and representations, including real life situations.
See the curriculum drivers are strongly evident within the math provision.
Take an ambitious responsibility of their own learning, with evidence of independent self-driven learning and challenge.
Have access to high quality and rich provision enabling fluency, problem solving and reasoning

Importance of Maths

"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 to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. A 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."

Aims

The national curriculum for mathematics aims 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.

Primary National Curriculum England 2014

Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract

The Concrete Pictorial Abstract (CPA) approach is a system of learning that uses physical and visual aids to build a child’s understanding of abstract topics.

Pupils are introduced to a new mathematical concept through the use of concrete resources (e.g. fruit, base 10 blocks etc). When they are comfortable solving problems with physical aids, they are given problems with pictures – usually pictorial representations of the concrete objects they were using.

Then they are asked to solve problems where they only have the abstract i.e. numbers or other symbols. Building these steps across a lesson can help pupils better understand the relationship between numbers and the real world, and therefore helps secure their understanding of the mathematical concept they are learning.