Maths

At Drapers’ Brookside we aim to inspire every child to enjoy and appreciate the power and beauty that maths brings as a subject, taking them on a journey towards maths mastery. We want pupils to feel a sense of enjoyment through completing maths tasks, and our curriculum challenges them to be curious about how maths helps us to understand the world around us.

“Mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.”

Albert Einstein

Maths is essential to everyday life; science, technology and engineering rely on it, but ultimately maths is necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. Contrary to popular belief, maths also facilitates creative thinking, engaging pupils in problem solving tasks and teaching them to look at the same idea from many different angles. Through maths, pupils at Drapers’ Brookside begin to understand how to solve problems efficiently and effectively, taking into account alternative perspectives and appreciating the views of others. A high-quality maths curriculum therefore provides a foundation for both further academic study and for becoming financially literate adults, regardless of the career path they choose.

Our Maths Curriculum Implementation

Our maths curriculum draws on a range of different schemes and pedagogical approaches to provide tailored teaching for the pupils in our demographic. The implementation of this curriculum can best be described in the following ways:

EYFS and Key Stage 1

In Early Years, pupils are provided with a wide range of practical maths activities designed to develop skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems, and to describe shape, space and measure.

Continuing with this theme, the principal focus as pupils move into Key Stage 1 is to develop confidence and mental fluency with counting, whole numbers and place value by providing pupils with concrete objects to support their conceptual understanding. Pupils will be given the opportunity to work within the four operations, and will begin to build reasoning skills by drawing comparisons between the different concepts. Teaching at this stage will also focus on comparing, sorting, describing and drawing a range of shapes, using accurate vocabulary, and pupils will be expected to describe and compare different quantities.

Key Stage 2

In Lower Key Stage 2 pupils continue to build on the skills developed in Key Stage 1, becoming increasingly fluent with whole numbers, place value, number facts and the four operations. This should ensure that pupils develop efficient written and mental methods and enable them to perform calculations with increasingly large whole numbers. There will be a move at this stage towards simple fractions and decimal place value to solve a range of problems. Teaching will also focus on shapes and their properties, as well as lessons that focus on using and applying units of measure. By the end of Year 4, pupils should have memorised their multiplication tables up to and including the 12 times table, applying this skill across the range of work completed at this level.

By the time pupils reach Upper Key Stage 2 they should be using the skills built in previous years to solve a wide range of increasingly complex problems using the most efficient written and mental methods of calculation. The introduction of algebra as a means for expressing and solving problems is introduced to pave the way for more complex concepts as pupils prepare to transition to the next stage in their education. The teaching of shape, space and measure will consolidate and extend the knowledge developed in number, bringing together different aspects of maths to demonstrate more complex links. Pupils will be able to classify shapes with increasingly complex geometric properties, learning the vocabulary needed to describe them.

At all stages, pupils will focus on reading, spelling and pronouncing mathematical correctly at an appropriate level for their stage of development.

Key Skills

Following a spiral curriculum model, pupils will develop knowledge and understanding of:

  • Place value
  • Number
  • The four operations
  • Shape
  • Space
  • Measure
  • Algebra