Maths statement

Mathematics is essential to our understanding of the world around us and is a life skill that all children will need in the future so that they can be financially literate and will be necessary for all forms of employment in some way.

The importance of Mathematics in everyday use, especially in relation to essential life skills, such as telling the time and understanding money are considered vital in their learning experience.

Our aim at Robert Kett is to foster an interest in the subject so that they develop a curiosity and the ability to reason about their world.

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

• Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including the varied and regular practice of increasingly complex problems over time.
• Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, understanding relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.
• Can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.

We look for our children to develop a deep, conceptual understanding of the topic and be able to build on this over time. We aim for our children to foster positive attitudes towards Mathematics by developing confidence, independence, resilience and co-operation skills.

The use of Mathematics manipulatives is integral to the concrete – pictorial – abstract approach and thus planned into our learning and teaching. Children build on the concrete approach by using pictorial representations, which can then be used to reason and solve problems.

Objects and pictures are used to demonstrate and visualise abstract ideas, alongside numbers and symbols. With the foundations firmly laid, children can move to an abstract approach using numbers and key concepts with confidence.