The Fern Academy Trust Mathematics

Mathematics is a creative and highly inter-connected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. A high-quality mathematics education therefore provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject. At the Fern Academy Trust, we strongly believe that the exploration of mathematics should be interactive and engaging, with bespoke content made relevant to our pupil’s real-life contexts and experiences within the world.

Intent

The Fern Academy Trust endeavours to enable pupils to thrive and be inquisitive, creative learners. Through encouraging and motivating pupils, we strive for our pupils to achieve in their mathematical learning through their efforts alongside a high-quality curriculum. We want our pupils to be confident to tackle a range of mathematical problems as independently as possible.

Our intent is to ensure that all our pupils from EYFS to year 6 are provided with a curriculum that is varied to support pupil’s fluency, logical reasoning and problem-solving, skills and knowledge. Through their growing knowledge of mathematics, children will become equipped to apply this to real life contexts beyond the classroom.

We want our pupils to have opportunities to be creative mathematicians and take ownership over their learning where appropriate. We strive to sufficiently challenge our pupils to further their learning and want them to gain skills that are transferrable to other subjects.

At the Fern Academy Trust we aims for our pupils to:

Have a secure and solid sense of number
Know key number facts by heart, such as number bonds and times tables
Have a secure knowledge of the four operations used in mathematics and when to use them
Use long term memory to access key knowledge to derive answers
Reason mathematically using key vocabulary and sentence stems where appropriate
Problem solve using a range of taught strategies and using the most efficient method
Represent their thinking through a range of representations, models and concrete manipulatives
Demonstrate resilience to challenge
Develop metacognitive skills

Implementation

The Fern Academy Trust implements its intent through planning a high-quality mathematical curriculum that takes a mastery approach. Our pupils’ journey starts in the EYFS where pupils are provided with varied opportunities to explore mathematics through enabling environments and quality interactions with practitioners. This lays the foundations for their mathematical learning journey through to year 6.

Each year group from reception to year 6 are provided with objective maps (that have been developed by the mathematics coordinator) which sequences small step learning objectives, which clearly set out the knowledge and skills for children to gain at each stage of their learning journey. These have been developed in line with the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Guidance (Department for Education, 2024), the National Curriculum (2014) and the Department for Education Mathematics guidance: key stages 1 and 2 (ready-to-progress, June 2020).

The objective maps strategically build upon prior learning by ensuring that all children recap and revisit previous year’s objectives to ensure security of earlier skills before moving forward. In addition to this, key vocabulary that we want our pupils to engage with is mapped out for each concept area for each year group.

Our teachers careful planning ensures that children gain a rich mathematical education. The grounding for this begins in the EYFS through a combination of direct teaching and child-initiated play. Following on from the foundations set in the EYFS our teachers within KS1 and KS2 implement their mathematical teaching through:

A small step, episodic lesson delivery that ensures the majority of pupils keep up with the lesson content
Planned small group, whole class and individual tasks
The use of a range of concrete materials, pictorial representations and abstract symbols, to allow pupils to explore abstract concepts visually and practically
A range of key questions which are used to provoke deep mathematical thinking and discussions
Promoting an important emphasis on mathematical vocabulary at the beginning of lessons, which is drawn upon throughout and supported through sentence stems and discussions
Encouraging pupils to explain their reasoning through oral discussions and written answers
Beginning lessons with a recap to activate prior learning and skills needed for the learning objective
Involving a deeper-thinking element in every lesson (year 2-6), consisting of a reasoning and/or problem-solving activity to promote mastery and mastery with greater depth. Deeper-thinking questions involve increasingly complex problems in new or unfamiliar contexts where the approach is not immediately obvious
Adapting learning and resources to ensure an inclusive learning environment for those with additional needs, where necessary
Displaying, modelling and sharing of appropriate and efficient methods

Impact

Throughout the Fern Academy our curriculum builds long-term learning and progression. We measure the impact this has on our pupils in various ways.

Teacher assessment is continuous throughout every lesson to ensure that errors and misconception are identified quickly. Teachers and teaching assistants deliver same day/next morning interventions to address pupils’ learning needs.

At the end of the EYFS teachers complete an Early Years Foundation Stage Profile for each pupil. Teachers make a judgement against the Maths Early Learning Goals.

Within KS1 and KS2, at the beginning of each new concept, diagnostic assessment is carried out to understand pupil’s prior knowledge and to identify any possible misconceptions so that the teachers can effective plan for the needs of their pupils. Diagnostic assessment is carried out at the end of a unit of work to ensure all pupils have sufficient knowledge for the next step in their learning; should a pupil have any gaps in their learning, the teacher will make necessary arrangements to ensure children are ready to progress.

Internal assessment points are carried out termly to monitor progress over the course of the year. Mathematics coordinators and members of the senior leadership team regularly analyse pupil progress and attainment data to inform and direct access arrangements for future learning.

The end points that we wish for our pupils to reach when they leave primary school in mathematics are:

For children to have a real sense of number and confidence when calculating mentally.
To be able to recall key facts fluently and to use these to help them in later life.
For the children to become responsible and driven learners, who seize opportunities for development
To be confident and articulate when commenting, reasoning and/or explaining (we ensure we use mathematical language and reasoning throughout our primary curriculum to promote this)
To be able to demonstrate and resilience when faced with challenge/problems, and to carry this skill with them into secondary school and later life
To be able to apply skills they have learned when faced with something new and unfamiliar
To have sound, secure knowledge of mathematical vocabulary and to use this confidently aloud and in writing
To provide children with a mathematical skill-set that they will be able to draw upon and apply to further their life chances

The national curriculum for mathematics aims to ensure that all pupils:

become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.

reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.

can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.

Times Tables

Learning times tables is a focus across the whole school, as we are striving to support our pupils to retain their times tables knowledge. Retaining times tables facts is tricky for a lot of children and they should be able to recall multiplication and division facts for multiplication tables up to 12x12, by the end of year 4. Due to this each year group from years 1-6 have been allocated specific times tables which they will focus on during the year. These are shown below:

Year 1	Counting in 2s and 10s.
Year 2	2, 5 and 10 times tables.
Year 3	3, 4 and 8 times tables (as well as already knowing the 2, 5 and 10 times tables).
Year 4	6, 7, 9, 11 and 12 times tables (as well as already knowing the 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10 times tables).
Year 5 & 6	Children should already know all their times table facts and will be using these to solve trickier maths problems. These include equivalent fractions, multiplication and division word problems, area and many more!

We will be working hard to learn times tables within school but we would also like children to be encouraged to practise them at home. Please ask for your child's maths teacher to provide you with their unique Times Table Rockstar password!

For children working on number bonds, they will also have a Numbots login and password, again ask your child's maths teacher for the password!

A fun way to learn times tables is by listening to songs. You can find a selection of songs below.

Two Times Table Song	Three Times Table Song	Four Times Table Song	Five Times Table Song	Six Times Table Song	Seven Times Table Song
Seven Times Table Song	Eight Times Table Song	Nine Times Table Song	Ten Times Table Song	Eleven Times Table Song	Twelve Times Table Song

Useful Websites

To aid your child’s learning in Maths at home, we have compiled a selection of website links that you will find informative and entertaining. Enjoy!!

EY Maths – EYFS Maths BBC Bitesize – KS1 Maths BBC Bitesize – KS2 Maths

Topmarks - Maths Games nrich - For Parents ict games - Maths Games