Intent

Maths gives us the opportunity to traverse the world around us. From the minuscule, looking at how atoms behave, to the engineering involved in building cars and planes and even the natural world, to the grandest scale of the expanse of the universe and the planets and stars that make up the night sky.

Critical to doing this is the ability to solve problems in all areas of life; this will allow students to enjoy learning and become curious.

Our curriculum will allow students to meet the many exciting challenges that they will encounter during their exploration of Maths and gain the confidence required to face the unknown. 

Using the Mastery approach allows us to explore Maths comprehensively and deeply to a high standard to help our students tackle any mathematical problem they face, whether this occurs in their school journey or later in life as they develop and find their own path in the world, we need to build the resilience of our students not to fear any problem regardless of where they encounter it.

This is why, in lessons, we promote communication through embedded oracy skills and discovery; through curiosity; interleaving learning and linking learning to real-life contexts.

The most important part of learning in Mathematics is the curiosity to discover and understand the journey towards the answer, as this is more important than the final answer.

The National Curriculum for Maths aims to ensure that all children:

• Can solve problems by applying their curiosity within Mathematics learning to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, strong oracy and communication skills and the ability to break down problems into a series of simpler steps, showing resilience in seeking solutions.
• Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language and linking, when possible, to real-world applications to connect their learning and understanding in context.

Become fluent in the fundamentals of Mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils have conceptual understanding and can recall and apply their knowledge rapidly and accurately to solve problems.

Implementation

Since we as a subject focus on the development of mastery, problem solving and analytical thinking, we have thought carefully about how we can implement this in every key stage. Our other main focus is to develop the resilience of our students, as we believe this is key to how students approach mathematics and its challenges.

Throughout the KS3 curriculum, we focus on implementing the development of mastery, problem-solving solving and analytical thinking. We do this by subscribing to the ideas that underpin the Singaporean style of teaching and the use of the ‘Discovery Mathematics’ series of textbooks to support this. This focuses the teaching and learning on a deeper understanding of the principles of the key domains of knowledge: Number, Algebra, Ratio and Proportion, Geometry and Statistics, where students work through at a pace that suits their ability. We develop the resilience of the students through the use of whiteboards, which helps students to learn that mistakes and misconceptions are never the end of the journey but a stop on the way there.

The development of mastery, problem solving and analytical thinking in KS3 leads directly to supporting the introduction of new knowledge and skills that are introduced in KS4. During the KS4 curriculum, we start to diverge in terms of differentiation, where high-attaining pupils are introduced to the additional mathematical content. We continue to look to develop their fluency, reasoning and problem-solving through the use of varied questioning relating to the real world.

Our KS5 curriculum offers next steps for our students to explore Mathematics through the A Level curriculum. This helps them to relate mathematical problem-solving to a wider array of real-world issues, especially through the Statistics and Mechanics elements of the A Level. As well as the introduction to new key concepts such as Differentiation and Integration, students further develop the key knowledge gained throughout their studies at KS3 and KS4.

Impact

We hope that through our curriculum we help students to develop into confident, passionate and knowledgeable mathematicians. Throughout their curriculum journey, we hope they learn to relish the challenge of mathematics and secure the concepts of mathematics that help them to solve problems that they will come across in everyday life using logical reasoning that has been built through their lessons. This will hopefully be shown through our assessment of their knowledge using content that has a problem-solving focus, and as prior knowledge being recalled to scaffold their learning of new knowledge. We also realise our intent by relating the key concepts of Maths to next steps for students, whether this be KS4, further/higher education or employment.

Progression Map

Please view the additional documents in school:

• Curriculum on a page
• Knowledge Organisers