Maths

"A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new" 

Albert Einstein

At Oatlands Infant School we encourage risk-taking within our maths curriculum. We firmly believe that maths enables our children to explore and try new ideas without the fear of failure. The children are encouraged to delve deeper into their understanding of maths and how it relates to the world around them.

Maths Rocks Day is an annual day where we all dress up as Rock Stars and celebrate the power of maths and music to inspire and build up our confidence and self-esteem.

On this special day, Rock Kidz visit and we get to rock out to two amazing shows as well as participating in a host of exciting maths themed activities. 

Our Maths Curriculum

In Reception, we use Mastering Number to develop confidence with number, early number sense and automaticity. The Early Learning Goals aim to ensure that:

 Numbers

• Children should have a deep understanding of numbers up to 10, including the composition of each number.
• Being able to subitise; recognising quantities without counting up to 5.
• Be able to automatically recall without reference to rhymes, counting or other aids.
• Understand number bonds up to 5, including subtraction facts and some number bonds to 10, including double facts.

Numerical Patterns

• Be able to verbally count beyond 20, recognising the pattern of the counting system.
• Be able to compare quantities of up to 10 in different contexts, recognising when one quantity is greater than, less than, or the same as the other quantity.
• Be able to explore and represent patterns within numbers up to 10, including evens and odds, double facts and how quantities can be distributed equally.

In Key Stage 1 we follow the National Curriculum for maths using a mastery approach. This is to encourage and allow all children to work together on the same topic so that all children are able to gain a deeper understanding and proficiency in maths.

The National Curriculum 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. 

Our Intent

At Oatlands Infant School, we adopt a knowledge and mastery approach to Mathematics to encourage children to become resilient, confident problem-solvers. We believe that Maths enables us to nurture many other aspects of our children’s lives. It prevents chaos, makes our lives more orderly, and gives us the power of reasoning and creativity, as well as critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. These values guide our ideas about the curriculum and inspire our children with a sense of purpose, engagement and excitement.

During lessons, children are challenged through a variety of high-quality, purposeful activities where they show their workings using concrete resources before establishing more formal ways of representing their understanding. We aim for children to use the appropriate vocabulary and reasoning skills when explaining their methods in order to apply their skills in real-life contexts and become confident mathematical thinkers.

Mastering Number at home 

We recently held mastering number parent workshops for reception children and their parents in school. If you would like any more information on these, please contact your child's class teacher.