St Dunstan's SchoolMaths Curriculum
“Good Mathematics is not about how many answers you know…… it’s how you behave when you don’t know.” (Einstein)
Without mathematics, there’s nothing you can do. Everything around you is mathematics. Everything around you is numbers. –Shakuntala Devi
At St Dunstan’s, we intend to promote a positive attitude towards maths and provide our children with a wide mathematical education taught in an enjoyable, relevant and creative way. Our teaching and learning in mathematics is underpinned by the three aims of the national curriculum: mathematical fluency, reasoning, and problem-solving.
We believe that all children have the ability to be confident, creative and curious mathematicians.
Maths is used every day - it is an essential life skill. In ‘Marvellous Maths Mondays’, we explore all the opportunities to use maths in our daily lives. We use ‘real life’ experiences so children begin to understand the importance of applying maths skills in order to solve problems and engage them for future learning.
Maths is taught daily using the White Rose materials (which implement the 2014 National Curriculum) and this encourages fluency, reasoning and problem solving using a wide range of mathematical methods; including mental and written.
Fluency
We encourage our pupils to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics through varied and regular practice. Activities are planned to ensure pupils develop number sense and explore efficient strategies, whilst being challenged to apply skills across multiple domains.
Reasoning
Reasoning in mathematics sees our pupils following a line of enquiry, developing an argument, justifying and proving their thinking using mathematical language; all skills which we view as important as a mathematician and also transferable to all areas of life. Through careful modelling in daily talk tasks, the children learn how to apply logical and critical thinking skills to a task, whilst developing their ability to explain thinking using key vocabulary.
We ask our children to present their reasoning using an ABC model.
Agree- I agree with
Build upon- I would like to build upon
Challenge- I would like to respectfully challenge
Problem-solving
We acknowledge the important role that we play in developing our pupils as problem-solvers of the future. As such, problem-solving is an integral part of our mathematics curriculum and pupils are given regular opportunities to apply skills in lots of different subjects. Through these opportunities, they are encouraged to use systematic approaches and logical thinking, but most importantly it gives the children an opportunity and work together!
