Mathematics Curriculum Intent
The Maths program at Great Park academy is to first and foremost foster a positive attitude, enjoyment, excitement and motivation in the teaching and learning of mathematical concepts. Currently, children find Maths to be a bit of a mystery and say that they are not good at Maths. GPA’s aim and philosophy is to ensuring pupils become fluent in the foundational skills and knowledge in Maths; therefore, ensuring that children experience a growing self-confidence in their ability. Effective instruction is key to student success at Great Park. To provide effective instruction, our teachers consider what they want students to learn, how they will know whether students have learned it, how they will design instruction to promote the learning, and how they will respond to students who are not making progress. Real-life applications in GPA’s mathematical curriculum will help students to connect what they are learning in school to actuality and will help prepare them for maths in secondary school and the jobs of tomorrow. Through the carefully planned systematic design of our curriculum, all pupils with have high expectations and are expected to succeed.
Mathematics Curriculum Implementation
At Great Park Academy, we aim to foster enthusiastic and confident mathematicians. We celebrate our triumphs in learning – nurturing the development of a logical and methodical mindset in order to provide students with the tools to help them understand the world.
Building a strong foundation in maths is embedded in developing children’s confidence, problem solving and critical thinking skills. As a school, we understand the importance of fluency and take part in varied and frequent arithmetic practice such as arithmetic starters and session, times table challenges, monthly maths challenges and super learning days. These activities have allowed pupils to develop problem solving skills, deepened understanding and further their ability to recall and apply knowledge quickly and confidently, both in familiar and new situations.
Our Minds on Maths page will be updated throughout the year with our exciting maths challenges and events in school.
Below you can read information about our ‘Minds on Maths’ and ‘Times Table’ challenges and a summary of the several Maths activities throughout the year.
Monthly Maths Challenges
Each month, children can take part in a monthly maths challenge. The challenges can be accessed from the school website or the school Maths wall. Some of these challenging and engaging mathematical experiences can be completed at home with their parents/careers. The purpose of these are to encourage students to work collaboratively on a range of intriguing mathematical problems, while encouraging a love of problem solving. These challenges help learners become better problem solvers by explicitly giving them opportunities to develop key problem-solving skills: visualising, working backwards, reasoning logically conjecturing, working systematically, looking for patterns and trial and improvement techniques. The competition challenges students to show their understanding of basic principles through problem solving with a goal of encouraging student interest and confidence in maths. Furthermore, working on these tasks inspires children to practise using mathematical vocabulary in real world examples.
Times Table Challenge
The times tables challenge has been created for children, supporting rapid recall of multiplication facts and the corresponding division facts. There are 22 stages that are progressive and build speed and accuracy. Each child will be engage in a low stakes quiz on the stage they have been working on at home. Once completed successfully, pupils move to the next level of challenge. The aim of Maths Challenge activities is to fully embed the knowledge of times tables and their related number facts, providing clear understanding of the number system and also developing excellent recall of times tables, which supports understanding of further maths concepts. Children challenge themselves to improve their personal best each week, whether by moving onto a harder question set, or by completing more questions correctly.
Arithmetic Starters and sessions
Students participate in daily arithmetic questions to build number fluency and confidence in 5 minutes a day. Children are assigned 5 questions and given 5-10 minutes to complete questions either mentally or using written methods. This provides the perfect opportunity to address misconceptions and set arithmetic targets. Another advantage of arithmetic starters is to emphasis on finding the most efficient strategy to use when solving the arithmetic questions with written and mental method. Furthermore, students at GPA participate in targeted arithmetic sessions weekly; teachers cater these sessions on student needs. The focus on arithmetic calculations such as their multiplication facts has led to pupils tackling more complex problems with greater confidence and resilience. Children are no longer having to tackle remembering how to do the calculation needed or remembering which strategy to choose. Instead, they are able to put all their energy into how to solve their mathematical problem.
Super Learning Days
Based on student assessment, staff create Maths Super Learning Days to help focus intervention across the school in areas that require improvement. This may include arithmetic but also topics such as area and perimeter and strategies to answer reasoning questions.
Reasoning session
Once children are confident in their mathematical fluency, children will take part in weekly reasoning sessions. Using their foundational skills mastered from arithmetic sessions, become confident readers of mathematical problems, allowing exploration of different strategies, allowing students to apply their preferred methods to reason and solve problems accurately. These sessions are carried methodically catered to individual and class needs based on classwork and recent assessments.
PLT
Every week, children are provided with personalised learning time. During this time, the class teacher has a guided group to focus on maths specific objectives for targeted individuals. This may include working with children, who has not fully grasped a concept during a lesson, pre-teach target children, work with children on areas of arithmetic they are not fluent in or reasoning type questions. Meanwhile, the rest of the class work on the mathematical focus for the day. Using this approach has seen an immense impact on pupil confidence in maths and building resilience. For Year 6 pupils it has had a great impact on arithmetic scores, leaving children plenty of time to learn the reasoning and problem solving skills needed for the KS2 SATs introduced a set time each day of around 30 minutes following a carousel approach to fluency practice.