“An Adventure for the Mind, and a Home for the Heart”

“UN Rights of a Child Article 2: A child has rights, whatever their ethnicity, gender, religion, language or abilities. Whatever they think or say, whatever their family background.”

Maths

Our Vision for Maths:

To have a solid understanding of number and shape and measure.
To develop children who are independent learners and can use a range of strategies to solve different mathematical problems.
To provide learning experiences that encourage a reasoning and mastery approach.
To develop children who are confident to independently use a range of concrete and pictorial resources to aid their learning.

Shaping Our Maths Curriculum:

The Maths curriculum at our school focuses on encouraging children to question, reason, investigate and solve problems. We use a variety of strategies to allow this, which give children the opportunity to explore their thinking and ideas. Wherever possible, practical, ‘real’ activities are used to introduce concepts, transfer skills learnt and reinforce learning objectives, ensuring the children are engaged through enjoyable, stimulating activities.

The main areas taught are:

Number and place value,
Addition, subtraction,
Multiplication and division
Fractions
Measurement
Geometry: Properties of shape, position and direction
Statistics
Algebra, ratio and proportion at year 6.

Singapore Maths

Our approach to mathematics teaching is based on Singapore Maths. The principles are based on a concrete – pictorial – abstract – cycle of learning. There are many reasons that this approach develops understanding so well, but one key factor is that it is step-by-step and can be used at home or in the classroom.

The Singapore method begins by allowing children to start learning about Maths by playing with real objects, blocks or cut-out pictures. They build confidence with the basic ideas of adding and taking away. There is then a second stage of drawing pictures representing the objects. And only later do they gradually start to add numbers to their drawings.

This effective Maths approach is supported further by the use of ‘Maths No Problem’ textbooks, in Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4 and Year 5 which are based on the Singapore approach. Year 6 uses the Singapore maths approach through the use of a range of different resources.

Here are some links to further explain this approach:

http://www.mathsnoproblem.co.uk/parent-videos

http://www.mathsnoproblem.co.uk/singapore-maths

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/0/24925787

Features of Singapore Maths:

Emphasis on problem solving and comprehension, allowing students to relate what they learn and to connect knowledge
Careful scaffolding of core competencies of : visualisation as a platform for comprehension, mental strategies to develop decision making abilities, pattern recognition, to support the ability to make connections and generalise
Emphasis on the foundations for learning and not on the content itself so students learn to think mathematically as opposed to merely reciting formulas or procedures.

Our Maths curriculum is also drawn from: