Shaping Learning For Life
A Stockbridge Mathematician
Maths has a key role in our curriculum provision at Stockbridge Primary & Pre-school as it plays a fundamental role in underpinning so many wider areas of learning from Early Year through to Year 6. Fluency with number and confidence with calculations is at the heart of our Maths vision so that all children can apply their learning to real-life contexts and scenarios beyond the classroom.
At Stockbridge, we follow the White Rose curriculum planning, ensuring that teaching is in small, manageable steps and builds on learning from previous topics in order to ensure a secure understanding of key concepts. When introducing new concepts, we use a concrete, pictorial and abstract approach to embed learning and build competency. We consistently adapt our teaching to make the most of real life contexts linked to our topics and ensure every lesson has an appropriate challenge with rich problem-solving and reasoning opportunities.
Times tables
Yes there’s multiplication check in Year 4 and yes of course, we expect children to do well but that’s not why we teacher times tables! They are a critical, fundamental part of maths development. If you can understand times tables, you know about patterns of number, you can make links between chunks of knowledge an you can confidently tackle bigger problems with efficient methods and sound knowledge.
Alongside the weekly teaching of our year group specific times table goals, we use the Times Tables Rock Stars platform from Year 1 – to Year 6 to ensure confidence and recall with both multiplication and division facts both at school and at home. As we acknowledge the importance of a secure grounding in these essential skills in order to excel as a lifelong mathematician.
Maths toolbox
To support daily teaching, each class has their own Maths toolbox to collect their thinking, key ideas, patterns and methods.
From Year R to Year 6, this includes using manipulatives, models and formal methods to build number fluency. Our Maths toolboxes then provide the mathematical tools and language that children can refer back to when solving problems and reasoning in a range of different practical contexts and real-life scenarios.
Allowing all children to take ownership of their Maths learning, talk through their strategies and reflect on the most efficient strategies, while building their long term memory is key to long term success in maths and each year, the toolbox moves on with the children to their new class.