Everyone can do maths: everyone can!
At Witley C of E Infant School we follow the White Rose Maths Scheme and the NCETM Mastering Number, both of which adopt small step teaching to mathematical concepts so that all children can achieve. Pupils are taught as a whole-class following the White Rose curriculum overviews before moving forward, therefore leaving no pupil behind.
Our Maths Subject Lead at Witley is Mrs Angie Stratford.
What is Maths Mastery?
Mastering maths means pupils acquiring a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject.
The phrase ‘teaching for mastery’ describes the elements of classroom practice and school organisation that combine to give pupils the best chances of mastering maths. Achieving mastery means acquiring a solid enough understanding of the maths that’s been taught to enable pupils to move on to more advanced material.
Our aim is to teach a high quality maths curriculum which is challenging and inspiring and allows children to apply their developing mathematical knowledge, reasoning and problem solving across all areas of their learning at school and at home.
Maths is an essential part of everyday life. It is critical to science, technology and engineering and can be applied to the whole curriculum. Our high-quality maths education at Witley provides a foundation for understanding the world, an ability to reason and encourages a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about numbers.
Curriculum Implementation
We teach Maths following the guidance around small steps of progression in The White Rose Maths. In addition we have additional Mastering Number sessions to support maths learning.
Fluency, reasoning and problem solving are at the heart of the approach. Our approach of concrete, pictorial, abstract (CPA) supports children's learning and progression:
- A concrete approach refers to the physical resources that children can manipulate to support their learning; examples include clocks, place value counters and bead strings.
- A pictorial approach refers to the visual models that can be used to support the understanding of methods and concepts, such as part-whole models and open number lines.
- The abstract approach, is the written method that the progression of skills and knowledge works towards, an example of this is partitioning of 2-digit numbers into columns for addition and subtraction.
Teaching for Mastery offers all pupils the chance to build self-confidence and resilience in maths, embedding skills and knowledge for future learning.
