Maths
At Redfield Educate Together our approach to teaching Mathematics fosters and promotes our ethos and beliefs that all children can achieve and succeed.
We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework and the National Curriculum, using the White Rose Maths scheme to form the basis of our planning throughout our school, from EYFS to Year Six.
What is White Rose Maths?
The White Rose Maths ‘schemes of learning’ are hugely popular with schools in the UK and in many other countries, too. They also produce many other resources to help increase both fun and success in maths. Rooted in globally respected research, the resources are written by experienced, practising teachers and are available for pupils from nursery and primary years and through secondary school to GCSE.
For each year group, the scheme of learning comprises of individual blocks of learning about a particular topic with lots of time spent on building strong number skills. These important core skills lay a solid foundations for more complicated learning later on.
Each block of knowledge is divided into a series of small learning steps. Together, these small steps cover all the curriculum content that your child needs to know.
Brain science tells us that by learning maths in small, related chunks, your child will remember more. White Rose uses the best available research to map out the crucial learning steps that will help your child to understand clearly what they are learning.
The Curriculum Overview
White Rose Programme of Study for all year groups
You can find out which units your child is currently learning by checking your child's class page for their topic webs or for an overview of the year click here for our Long Term Plans. These are on the class pages.
You can then navigate to the parent section of White Rose to find more advice on the block of learning and the small steps taught.
Calculation Policy
The Redfield Educate Together Calculation Policy contains the written procedures that will be taught within our school alongside practical resources. It has been written to ensure consistency and progression throughout the school and reflects a whole school agreement.
The document is broken down into addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Each operation is then broken down into skills and each skill has a dedicated image showing representations and models that could be used to effectively teach that concept. There is an overview of the progression of skills linked to year groups to support cohesion across the school and a glossary of terms, representations and models that can support the teaching of different concepts.
Educate Together Calculation Policy
Mastering Number
Mastering Number at Reception and KS1 is a whole-class programme consisting of four short sessions each week, aimed at developing children’s fluency and flexibility with number. Schools will be provided with the teaching materials, including rekenreks, necessary to deliver the sessions, as well as teacher guidance on small-group work and support to enhance continuous provision.
In Reception, Mastering Number should be the main maths lesson for number-based work, but in KS1 it should be a short session for the whole class in addition to the main lesson. Suggestions for small-group intervention work are provided in the weekly teacher guides, and these can be used by teachers or teaching assistants with pupils at risk of falling behind. In Reception classes, teachers also incorporate Mastering Number into the class’s continuous provision and routines.
Times Tables
We know that children who can recall facts enjoy and are able to secure the maths curriculum easier than the children who can’t recall these facts. We also know from research that depth is much more important than speed.
At Redfield we teach times table fluency separately from application of these facts in Lower Key Stage Two. We use a variety of activities which develop reasoning to secure number facts whilst almost always teaching other linked aspects of the curriculum at the same time. We have a systematic, whole class approach to teaching the times tables and it is taught little and often, for a few minutes a couple of times each day.
We follow these key principles when teaching times tables in Key Stage Two:
-We learn each number sentence as a memorised phrase by repeating the sound pattern out loud.
We learn each fact one way round only.
4 x 6 = becomes six fours are twenty four.
We always state the larger number first. The children very quickly become attuned to this and it helps in the learning process.
We learn one new fact at a time. We will look at 6 x 6 = 36 one day. Then 7 x 6 = the following day.
We don’t think about the answers – we want them to become known facts so we leave the answers on the board.
You can see an overview of the building block facts that make up times tables and where they are taught by viewing the summary in the parent guides below.
There are a wide range of materials and resources available to support your child with their maths at home. In Key Stage Two, the expectation is that children practice their times tables fluency. All children have a log-in for Times Tables Rock Star which can be used at home as a way to practice this times tables fluency. Please see the video below for more information on the different game types:
Resources to support at home:
White Rose Maths provides parent booklets you may find useful for home: https://whiterosemaths.com/for-parents/parent-workbooks/
A parent guide to multiplication
