Intent

At Winterbourne Nursery and Infant School, we intend to provide a broad and balanced curriculum which caters for the needs of all individual children and prepares them with the necessary skills and knowledge to become successful in their future adventures. We incorporate sustained levels of challenge through varied and high quality activities with a focus on fluency, reasoning and problem solving. Mastery Pupils are required to explore maths in depth, using mathematical vocabulary to reason and explain their workings. A wide range of mathematical resources are used and pupils are taught to show their workings in a concrete, pictorial and abstract form when it is suitable. Each Maths concept is introduced with a practical lesson followed by a formal lesson where children demonstrate their understanding, fluency, reasoning and problem solving. Throughout the school children are taught and encouraged to explain their choice of methods and develop their mathematical reasoning skills using stem sentences.

Our curriculum ensures children apply mastery skills. We follow the Power Maths scheme to develop fluency, reasoning and problem solving. This mathematical knowledge and skillset will be encouraged and applied across all subjects. The expectation is that the majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace. However, decisions about when to progress should always be based on the security of pupils’ understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly should be challenged through being offered rich mastery and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content. Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material should consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on.

Implementation

The Mathematics curriculum at Winterbourne Nursery and Infants School is taught in blocks throughout the year, so that children can achieve depth in their learning.

Nursery

Each Nursery class follows Development Matters from the EYFS framework. Children develop early counting skills, through rhymes, songs and continuous provision (indoor and outdoor). Nursery children have daily ‘Number Time’ sessions, which focuses on a specific number. Within Nursery the children develop their fluency within numbers 1-5, which include representing numerals through their marks.

Power Maths

Every class from Reception (EYFS) to Y2 follows the Power Maths scheme of learning which is recommended by the UK’s Department for Education. Lessons are personalised to address the individual needs and requirements of the children (SEN/PKS) but coverage is maintained. We also will be using a range of planning resources provided by the NCETM to enrich our children’s maths skills.

 Concrete Pictorial Abstract (CPA)

We implement our approach through high quality teaching delivering appropriately challenging work for all individuals. To support us, we have a range of mathematical resources in classrooms including Numicon, Dienes – Base 10 and counters (concrete equipment). When children have grasped a concept using concrete equipment, images and diagrams are used (pictorial) prior to moving to abstract questions. Abstract maths relies on the children understanding a concept thoroughly and being able to use their knowledge and understanding to answer and solve maths problems without equipment or images.

Assessment

Through our teaching we continuously monitor pupils’ progress against expected attainment for their age, making formative assessment notes where appropriate and using these to inform our teaching and planning. Summative assessments are completed at the end of each half term; their results raise discussions in termly Pupil Progress Meetings. The main purpose of all assessment is to always ensure that we are providing excellent provision for every child.

 Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

We continuously strive to better ourselves and frequently share ideas and things that have been particularly effective. We take part in training opportunities and regional networking events, such as the NCETM work groups.