At Whiteheath Junior School, we are committed to providing high-quality teaching and learning of mathematics, providing a wealth of opportunities for all pupils. We aim to inspire children’s curiosity of mathematics encouraging them to pose their own questions making connections between their understanding of the subject and real life circumstances.

As a school, we believe that securing a strong attainment in mathematics provides children with a greater grounding in understanding the world around them, further granting them access to a great breadth of opportunities in later life.

• Children become fluent in the core areas of mathematics, through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time.
• Children can reason mathematically using mathematical language e.g. ‘I know that… therefore…’
• Children can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing confidence.
• Children are given all relevant opportunities to apply their subject knowledge in foundation subjects to further develop and consolidate their mathematical fluency and reasoning skills.

Mathematical concepts are progressively planned for using the White Rose Scheme. We teach maths lessons following a mastery approach to ensure children master mathematical concepts appropriate for their age-related expectation. In addition, the curriculum is designed to promote reasoning, problem solving linked deeper thinking when pupils have mastered a concept.

The approach to teaching mathematics incorporates the following principles:

• A maths lesson is taught every day.
• Lessons begin with retrieval questions from previous lessons and fluency practice.
• Lesson inputs are pacey incorporating key questions to ascertain children’s prior knowledge and address any misconceptions. Teaching incorporates the CPA (concrete, pictorial, abstract) approach, as outlined in mastery teaching, showing children different representations of a given concept. When modelling, teachers use age-appropriate, progressive mathematical language and provide opportunities for children to actively engage (e.g. whiteboards or jotters).
• Once children are ready, the lesson moves onto the ‘Developed Learning’ section where skills of fluency, reasoning and problem solving are practised and embedded. At this point, lessons are differentiated to suit the needs of the individual child. Children complete the same task and differentiation is implemented through scaffolding, resources and adult support. Where appropriate, some children are provided time to develop their prior ‘essential knowledge’ through a task personalised to their learning ability on the same learning outcome. We aim for the majority of our children to be exposed to our ‘challenge’ activity, where they can strengthen the depth of their understanding when a concept has been mastered.
• Focused reasoning is a key part of our maths lessons – it aims to build children’s confidence, familiarity with mathematical language and gives them an opportunity to connect and apply their skills. All children are given the opportunity to engage in reasoning in some capacity.
• All maths lessons end with a plenary to summarise learning, address misconceptions or encourage deeper thinking. Mini-plenaries are used where appropriate to assess children’s understanding.

As a result of the mastery approach, carefully structured lessons and high quality teaching, we aims for our learners to make good or better progress in lessons and we aim to inspire them to have a love for maths.