The Mathematics Curriculum 

at St Robert Bellarmine

“We are God’s work of art”

“A high quality maths education 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.”                           

Primary National Curriculum 2014

At St Robert Bellarmine, we believe that high-quality maths education provides the foundations for understanding the world and is a key life skill that enables an individual to participate fully as a member of society. 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.

Our mathematics curriculum is based on the expectations and aims of the 2014 National Curriculum for mathematics and the 2021 statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. Content is carefully sequenced through the year groups so that each area of mathematics progresses as children get older. Mathematics is taught according to the mathematics mastery approach, supported by the White Rose maths scheme. 

Haylock’s Cognitive Connections, which is based upon Bruner’s Theory of Learning, underpins our mathematical rationale to the effective teaching and learning of mathematics. Bruner’s theory of learning is based upon the principle that new concepts (regardless of the age of the learner) are taught enactively (concrete), iconically (pictorial) and symbolically as ways of capturing experiences in the form of knowledge and understanding in the working and long-term memory.

Becoming a mathematician is a process that requires active involvement. We aim to provide opportunities for our children to become actively engaged in the learning process, to inspire children by giving them a lively sense of interest and enjoyment in mathematics, with an understanding of its practical and creative use in everyday life.

We believe that mathematics is best learned through activities that allow students, no matter what age or ability, to explore and understand the mathematical concepts with concrete apparatus. Using equipment helps to deepen understanding and creates visual and concrete images from abstract concepts. All classes from nursery through to year six use equipment in lessons. Children will be provided with opportunities to explore varied representations of the same concept using a variety of different equipment to support connections in their learning.

We aim to develop mathematicians who are confident to choose to use the most appropriate concrete, pictorial or symbolic resources for all aspects of   fluency, reasoning or problem solving. A wide variety of resources are available in each classroom.

Our Intended Curriculum

The mathematics curriculum at St Robert Bellarmine Primary School embraces this principal and aims to ensure that all of our children, from EYFS to year 6 are fluent in the fundamentals of maths, are able to reason mathematically and become confident problem solvers.

Our Intended Curriculum to Develop Fluent Mathematicians

Fluency means becoming fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils have conceptual understanding and are able to recall and apply their knowledge rapidly and accurately to problems.

In our school we ensure that children become confident in the two types of fluency.

Conceptual fluency

e.g. exploring five strands of place value, what an equivalent fraction is and identifying features of different representations of data.

Procedural fluency

e.g. +- x ÷ calculation methods linked to whole numbers, fractions and decimals and exploring step by step methods.

Our Intended Curriculum to Develop  Reasoning Mathematicians

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

In our school we ensure that children become confident in mathematical reasoning through providing opportunities for them to:

Conjecture relationships and generalisations e.g. if I add an odd and an odd number it will always result in an even number or all quadrilaterals have 4 right angles – true or false?

Developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language e.g. prove it, justify, convince me, how can you work it and how did you work it out?

Reasoning twists – this is explored through challenges such as: alike and different, odd one out, true or false, spot the mistake and sometimes, always or never true. These reasoning challenges can be adopted or adapted for any strand of mathematics: number, measurement and geometry.

Our Intended Curriculum to develop Problem Solving Mathematicians

Problem solving means 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.

Problem solving requires the children to be secure in and build upon conceptual understanding (fluency) and mathematical thinking and language (reasoning) to help solve sophisticated problems in unfamiliar contexts.

We explore the five types of problem solving in different strands of mathematics –

1. Two and three step word problems including bar model
2. Finding all possibilities
3. Finding rules and describing patterns
4. Diagram problems and visual puzzles
5. Logic problems

Our Enacted Curriculum

Our curriculum design is based upon evidence from cognitive science. Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction are fundamental in the day-to-day teaching of lessons. The main principles that underpin this are:

• regular reviews and the revisiting of prior learning
• continual checking of understanding through effective questioning
• strong teacher modelling and guided practice
• carefully sequenced lessons that use ‘chunked learning’, allowing new learning to be retained
• precise feedback for our children

In addition, we also understand that learning is invisible in the short term. Research tells us that in order for pupils to have a greater depth of understanding and sustain mastery they must first master the basics, which takes time.

Daily routines ensure that we practise things repeatedly so children get better at them, and we revise things on a regular basis so that they don’t forget them.

Our Enacted Curriculum Developing Fluent Mathematicians

Children at St Robert Bellarmine will be given regular opportunities to recall known facts, develop number sense, know why they are doing what they are doing and know when it is appropriate and efficient to choose different methods and will apply skills to multiple contexts e.g. x by 10 to convert units of measurements.

To ensure that children have accurate recall of facts and methods we give high priority to regular practise and consolidation. We keep this fluency ‘bubbling’ through regular spaced repetition to ensure children do not forget e.g. 4-a-day sessions and rapid recall sessions. We do this through the children selecting and choosing an appropriate method/strategy e.g mentally, jot or annotate or choosing an expanded or compact written method.

Our Enacted Curriculum Developing Reasoning Mathematicians

The children champion Captain Conjecture as their mascot for mathematical reasoning.

To ensure that our children are confident in mathematical reasoning we model and encourage children to consider and choose what sort of answer or working out is required linked to different reasoning questions e.g. verbally explaining, using words or numerals and symbols, pictorial representations such as ten frames, place value charts or tables and use of concrete equipment such as Numicon, base 10, bead strings. Reasoning is explicitly taught during maths lessons and kept 'bubbling' through daily twists in either maths lessons or 4-a-day sessions.

Our Enacted Curriculum Developing Problem Solving Mathematicians

The White Rose Maths Hub materials form the basis of the teaching sequences from EYFS to Year 6 at St Robert Bellarmine. This underpins our maths philosophy and ensures that fluency, reasoning and problem solving are taught through a concrete, pictorial and symbolic methodology. Problem solving strategies are explicitly taught and modelled before children apply them independently to real life situations.

Our Learnt Maths Curriculum

The impact of our curriculum can be measured through two main questions

• How well are our pupils coping with the curriculum content?
• How well are they retaining previously taught content?

The vast majority of pupils have sustained mastery of the content, that is they remember more and are fluent in it. Activities are planned for pupils to combine this remembered knowledge and fluency with the opportunities to reason, problem solve and demonstrate their depth of understanding. We regularly monitor pupils to ensure that they are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum.

To explore how this curriculum area is taught in your child's class please refer to their class page.