Benton Dene Primary School

Maths

Benton Dene Primary School Maths curriculum follows the National Programme of Study for Mathematics. As an essential life-skill, the study and use of Maths provides a firm foundation in understanding the world around us. It is a gateway for successful participation in our local, wider and global community and is a critical skillset with which we can access and explore creative solutions to the intriguing questions presented to us.

We aim for all pupils to:

become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics so that they develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately
be able to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of problems with increasing sophistication, including in unfamiliar contexts and to model real-life scenarios
reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry and develop and present a justification, argument or proof using mathematical language
have an appreciation of number and number operations, which enables mental calculations and written procedures to be performed efficiently, fluently and accurately
enjoy working in Mathematics, be curious in the subject, recognise the beauty and power of number and apply Maths skills to the wider world.

How Maths is taught at Benton Dene Primary:

We follow the National Programme of Study, utilising White Rose Maths as a guiding resource to ensure our children have comprehensive coverage of the Maths National Curriculum. However, our teachers, who know our students best, go beyond this framework to create a bespoke curriculum tailored to the unique needs of our school. This includes employing a thick and thin curriculum approach to provide retrieval opportunities for focus areas such as geometry. All children are challenged and supported within their lessons to ensure each individual makes progress. We ensure that maths is taught in creative and engaging lessons using a wide array of maths manipulatives to aid and support our children in their learning. IT is used widely across each year group to deliver the maths curriculum and to offer our pupils a range of exciting activities to challenge and inspire. We aim to encourage the deepest of learning for our children so that their knowledge can be transferred and applied across other subjects and their everyday lives. Maths is widely promoted across the school and our classrooms have working walls that the children can utilise to support their learning and provide extra challenge.

Fluency, reasoning and investigation / problem solving are key features of every Maths lesson: pupils focus on their fluency - the ability to recall and apply their knowledge rapidly and accurately; reasoning is a key area in all our lessons as our children need to be able to describe, explain, convince, justify and prove to be successful in this subject; vocabulary is an essential part of each lesson and the children are explicitly taught mathematical terms. Each lesson provides children with the opportunity to explore and refine their ideas, use their mathematical language to investigate a line of enquiry and problem solve in a variety of different contexts.

Typical Structure of a Maths Lesson: Teachers have a flexible approach to the structure of their lesson in order to meet the needs of their pupils and deliver a mastery maths curriculum. However, all Maths lessons will have the following key elements: