Mathematics

At Grange Farm, we value Maths as an integral part of our curriculum.  It is one of the foundations of learning both as a subject in itself and in playing a significant part of learning in other subjects and in preparation for life beyond school.

Maths is a creative and highly inter-connected discipline that has been developed over centuries and across many cultures.  It provides the solution to some of history’s most intriguing questions and still poses fascinating questions that we are yet to solve.  It is essential to everyday live, critical to science, technology and engineering and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment.  It opens doors in children’s thinking that helps them to make links between and progress in other areas of the curriculum.

In following the National Curriculum, we aim to ensure that all children:

• Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice in a variety of increasingly complex contexts over time, so that pupils are able to recall and apply their knowledge rapidly and accurately to problems
• 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

We value each of these three tenets as foundations of our curriculum throughout school: all three will feature within the curriculum for all age groups.  

We adhere to the National Curriculum expectation that a majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace.  However, we recognise our children as individuals who will each need personalised challenge at times.  Children who grasp concepts rapidly will be challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content.  Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material will be supported in consolidating their understanding, including through additional practice, securing firm foundations to base their future learning on before moving on.

Our vision for Maths is that it provides, for all pupils, 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.  As such, we aim to provide the children with a wide variety of mathematical experiences, both within and beyond the classroom, including: external competitions, internal times table contests, Number Day and Money Sense activities.