Maths
Maths at Norton Fitzwarren Church School
Across the school, the adapted versions of the White Rose schemes of learning are followed to give an indication of the order and duration of each unit within the Maths curriculum; however, these durations may be adapted to best fit the children within the cohort. Teachers utilise a range of resources to plan their lessons including the White Rose Premium, I See Reasoning and NCETM resources.
The CPA approach (Concrete – Pictorial – Abstract) is used, whereby children are taught conceptually through problem-solving contexts, which are initially linked to real-life situations and real objects that they can manipulate. Pupils start by being able to understand and relate to the questions in a ‘concrete’ method. As the pupil progresses in their understanding, the context is then represented in a ‘pictorial’ state (actual pictures of the objects at first, then later moving onto more abstract representations like bar models). The final stage, ‘abstract’ refers to the more formal methods of calculations like column multiplication or the bus-stop method. All these algorithms are linked closely to the conceptual understanding as opposed to taught as a set of procedures or rules to follow. Teaching this way allows children to go back to first principles if they were to ever forget the ‘rules’. Furthermore, procedural fluency is developed and encouraged through investigating many different methods of solving a problem. Through this process, children develop a range of procedures and more importantly, are able to distinguish between, and use, more efficient methods when faced with a variety of problems.
The three main aims of the National Curriculum are for all children to be fluent, to reason and to problem solve. It’s therefore vital that all children can access all the questions. Some children may require more support at times, but we would still expect them to be exposed to reasoning and problem-solving questions. Varying the level of challenge in the reasoning and problem-solving questions ensures some are accessible to every child while others help to stretch thinking and deepen understanding.
Our Maths Offer below offers more information about our Maths curriculum and delivery.
Calculation Policies
Please take a look at our calculation policies to see how we teach calculation in each year group at school.
In KS2, the children begin to learn the formal written methods for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division (column and bus stop). If you would like to support your child with this at home, please take a look at our calculation policies to see how we teach them at school.
TTRockStars
From Year 2, we use TTRockStars to practise our times tables. This can be done on any device with internet access by searching for TTRockStars. A little each day is the best practice, but 10 minutes a week will boost your child's fluency and speed of recall, which helps in many areas of Maths.
Here are links to the songs we've been using to practise our times tables recall: