Maths

Maths

Our Intent : Why is Mathematics so important in the curriculum?

‘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.’ (DfE, Mathematics Programme of Study, 2013)

At King Richard III School, we want to give children the confidence and understanding to enable them to go on and be able to use Maths in their everyday lives and future careers. We want them to see Maths as enjoyable and exciting as well as useful in other subject areas. We want them to be able to communicate their ideas and work together to solve problems “because the whole point of learning maths is to be able to solve problems.” (Problem solving and the new Curriculum, Lynne McClure, 2019, www.nrich.org)

We want children to explore shapes and develop measuring skills in practical contexts. We want children to become lifelong confident and competent users of numbers in a range of contexts and to build on a strong foundation, allowing them to be able to use and manipulate increasingly large numbers.

We want children to become clear in their reasoning and decision making in order to be able to explain and solve mathematical problems and to be able to gather, present and interpret data to help to answer questions. We want to develop learners who can recognise and interpret mathematical symbols and who understand how to read, write and complete calculations involving those symbols.

In order to achieve these aims, we have chosen to use the White Rose Maths materials as a basis for our curriculum. This scheme comes from a highly respected source. It is a curriculum which has been reviewed and improved (Year 1 and 2 are currently following the third version). The White Rose materials are suited to use with the children in our school as they divide the material into 'small steps', ensuring the teaching within each unit is sequenced in the correct way.

We use White Rose Maths at KRIII If you would like ideas for supporting your child at home, or to learn more about maths in school, please follow the link below which will take you to the White Rose Parent Resources page.

You can download workbooks to use with your children at home from this page

What do our children think about learning maths?

A Year 1 child tells us they like maths and are good at it. They want to be a Scientist when they grow up and they will need to know maths for that job.

A Year 2 child tells us they are good at math and enjoy learning it. They aren't sure about what job they want to do yet, but when asked if they will need to know some maths as a grown-up they answered "Of course!".

A Year 1 child tells us that when they grow up they want to "have money to buy things" and they knew that maths would help them with this.

A Year 1 child whose chosen career as a writer might not seem to obviously need maths but they said that they would need to know maths as an adult.

What do our children think about learning maths?

Maths around the school