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Maths

The Short Wood Mathematics Offer:

 

Mathematics is a creative and highly inter-connected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of historys most intriguing problems. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for understanding finances and most forms of employment. A high-quality mathematics education therefore provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject. Mathematics equips pupils with the uniquely powerful set of tools to understand and change the world. These tools include logical reasoning, problem solving skills and the ability to think in abstract ways.

 

Mathematics has a fascination of its own for some people.  The discovery of the infinite range of mathematically generated ideas gives pleasure to many children and adults.

 

Through teaching with a contextual and problem solving approach, children will learn to understand, distill and clarify information; consider what they know that will help them to solve problems, realising what they need to know next; create systems and strategies, organising information in a way that helps find patterns and ultimately solutions and to communicate and present their findings effectively.

 

We are committed to ensuring that all pupils achieve mastery in the key concepts of mathematics, appropriate for their age group, in order that they make genuine progress and avoid gaps in their understanding that provide barriers to learning as they move through education.

How it is Taught:

Following the White Rose Scheme of learning our teaching process follows these key principles: 

  • A skill based knowledge informed curriculum that builds on prior knowledge and shows clear progressive steps. 
  • Effective questioning – for deep thinking and for enquiry
  • Practice and rehearsal of key skills and knowledge
  • Exploring contexts beyond the maths lesson (real life contexts or cross curricular links)
  • Levels of Teaching/Questioning
  • Instructional (use of models/images, key vocabulary, demonstration teaching)
  • Qualifying (applying knowledge, making choices)
  • Deep/Challenge (different contexts, levels of challenge, reasoning)

Outdoor Maths: 

 

As part of the Short Wood offer for Mathematics we encourage and facilitate making mathematical links throughout the 'real world'.

 

Our rationale for this is:

Many children fail to make the connection between the maths concepts they learn in the classroom and their lives outside of school. Taking the classroom outside and giving children opportunities to apply their learning in their natural environment helps make the maths they learn meaningful.

 

We are lucky to have access to a range of wonderful school grounds which our staff us their expertise to make the most creative and meaningful links for our children. 

Tips to Support Your Child with Maths:

 

There are lots of things you can do to support your child at home! The most important thing to remember is that maths should be fun—we want children to enjoy what they are learning and feel confident in their own abilities. This will help them to be willing to “have a go”, even if they are not sure of something.

 

Maths is all around you and can do done little and often:

  • Discuss the shapes that you can see around the house or on a walk,, talk about the properties that make them special.
  • Read the numbers that you see on signs—really good on a long drive on the motorway!
  • When shopping, ask children to work out the totals or the change you might get. Discuss what the cost would be if I had 2, 3 or 4 of something. They could also estimate the cost with a larger shop!
  • If cooking, ask the children to measure out the ingredients. Talk about the units they are using (eg: grams for weight; millilitres for liquids) This also involves reading numbers!
  • Go out on a walk—count the number of cars or animals you see. You could make a graph of the data, ask questions about it, sort them in different ways.

 

It is also important that you do lots of work with numbers. Children need to have a secure understanding of numbers to achieve their best. These are just some ideas you could use to make the work fun and interesting:

  • Ordering number cards on a washing line
  • Encouraging children to use their number bonds to find change from 10p, 20p, 50p and £1
  • Painting times tables arrays/patterns
  • Matching pairs games (this could be times tables, number bonds, matching pictures to numbers or even shapes)
  • Beat the calculator or parent—Who can find the answer to the question the quickest?
  • Applying doubling and halving skills when cooking and using recipes
  • Learning finger games and rhymes for times tables and number bonds


For children who have computer access at home, there are lots of games you can use on the computer. These are really good for motivating children who are less enthusiastic about written tasks:

Attendance

Overall School: 95%

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