Mount Pleasant Primary School

Mathematics 

Curriculum Subject Lead - Mrs M Phillips

Our teaching of mathematics at Mount Pleasant is underpinned by the belief that all children need a deep understanding of the mathematics they are learning.  We believe it is important to devote time to concepts, building upon prior learning and spending to embed learning. We refer to this as our 'Linger Longer' approach. This enables children to master areas of mathematics and represent their learning in different ways through the concrete-pictorial-abstract approach (CPA). 

What is the CPA approach?

The concrete-pictorial- abstract approach allows children to firstly explore concepts using practical resources such as counters and cubes. Once confident, they can then start to represent their mathematical understanding using pictures and diagrams before finally moving onto written calculations and methods.


This sequence of learning is outlined fully in our calculations policy.

 

National Curriculum

We teach the National Curriculum for mathematics which aims to ensure that all children become fluent with number, can reason mathematically and solve increasingly complex problems.

Fluency

Mathematical fluency is vital and it is important that children are able to commit key facts to their long-term memory and use these flexibly. We support the teaching of these within daily maths lessons, arithmetic lessons and through 'Maths Challenges' in Year 1-6.  

The Maths Challenges have been designed at an age-appropriate level and include key arithmetic skills for each year group. These include recall of number facts, for example, number bonds and times tables and opportunities for children to use them to calculate and work out unknown facts.  It also includes the development of arithmetic skills with the four operations including with fractions, decimals and percentages within Key Stage 2.  

Reasoning and Problem Solving

During units of work, we ensure children are provided time and opportunities to apply their knowledge and skills to reasoning and problem solving tasks. Vocabulary understanding is essential; this is explicitly taught in lessons and used on class working walls. Sentence stems and reasoning prompts such as ‘True/false’ or ‘Spot the mistakes’ are used and children are supported in using age-appropriate vocabulary and reasoning phrases to communicate and justify their ideas. 

Home Learning

To support number fluency, children are expected to practise their Maths Challenges as part of our home learning policy. Children are given a copy of their current challenge to practise regularly. 

Use the link below to our Maths Challenges.

https://www.mount.dudley.sch.uk/Learning/Home-Learning/ 

Mount Pleasant Mathematics Curriculum

We plan alongside the National Curriculum expectations and have a clear overview for the units within each year group. Our termly overviews ensure that skills and knowledge are built on year by year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all children. It also allows children to understand how mathematics is an interconnected subject and provides opportunities for rich connections to made between topics in mathematics. We also believe it is imperative that children are applying their learning across the curriculum including in science, P.E and design and technology which includes our Christmas Enterprise projects. 

Autumn Term 2023

 Spring Term 2024

Mathematics at Mount Pleasant