Mathematic Excellence from the Heart of Leeds

Maths Curriculum

At Shakespeare we want children to believe maths is something they can all achieve academic excellence in. From Early Years to Year Six, we focus on developing excellent basic skills which are the foundation to fluency and deep understanding. Our curriculum is designed to ensure all children develop the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. Our curriculum is progressive in key skills and presents regular opportunities for children to reason and problem solve with an emphasis on real-life problems and relevant themes. Maths at Shakespeare allows children to be collaborative, resilient learners who, as they move from one stage to the next, take an increasing responsibility for their learning. All children, including children with developing language and special educational needs, will experience maths through concrete, pictorial and abstract representations. Lessons, working walls and practical resources are carefully considered and adapted to ensure all children can access the learning.

Maths Teaching Model

In our curriculum, we have considered the journey of a child through school, so that our curriculum is progressive, building on prior knowledge and skills and regularly revisiting key concepts whilst building upon key mathematical skills, knowledge and vocabulary. This starts in EYFS and continues through to Year 6 using the National Curriculum as its basis. The White Rose Maths scheme of learning is used as a resource to support this.

EYFS

At Shakespeare Primary School, we approach maths with a mastery model in mind. We are constantly striving for all children to achieve and understand the objectives detailed by the National Curriculum in Maths. To this end, we utilise White Rose Education maths resources to help guide some of our planning before amending, adapting and supplementing to best meet the needs of the learners in our classes. In EYFS, we follow the EYFS Statutory framework from 2023 and work on number, shape, measure and spatial thinking. We have a progression model specific for EYFS that plans for children from 2-3 up to Reception. We use a layering approach allowing mathematical concepts to be revisited and developed further across the year. There is ‘Digging Deeper’ element after each taught core theme to explore concepts more deeply and provide opportunities for additional challenge. Generally, teaching follows the pattern of whole class teaching where there is retrieval starter before a teaching input including teaching, modelling and practice. Children will then work in groups to practically apply the concepts introduced with resources and concrete examples. There are also mathematical themed areas in the continuous provision for additional opportunities for children to learn maths.

Year One to Year Six

Teachers plan lessons to create deeper understanding rather than accelerate children to new content. Concrete, visual and abstract resources will support children’s learning ensuring components are embedded. Variation will be planned into each lesson to develop children’s confidence when reasoning. The concepts and mathematical skills that children explore are revisited and built upon allowing children to apply new knowledge to the concepts in order to prepare them for future learning and life. The knowledge and skills developed in Maths are then applied throughout our curriculum of excellence including statistics in Science, shape work in art and place value in History.

Maths Essentials

We have a thorough approach to ensure all children acquire the basic skills required at each stage of learning. Some of the ways we achieve this include: Teacher tutoring, daily interventions, parent maths workshops, Times Table Rock Stars club, Maths Bot home learning, Prodigy club, Teacher mastery, Do Now activities on arrival to school, Mighty Multiple class display and competitions, use of TestBase questions, use of maniplualatives and models in all maths lessons, working wall prompts and scaffolds.

                              

            

 To read about our Mathematics curriculum in more detail, please click here.