Maths

Why Maths is Important

Maths is an essential skill that enables us to live an independent life. It teaches us how to make sense of the world around us, whether it be: calculating the total amount of money we need to purchase items, knowing what time to meet a connecting train or weighing precise amounts of ingredients when following a recipe. Maths helps us to develop problem solving and reasoning skills that allow us to solve a variety of problems in our every day lives.

National Curriculum Purpose of Study

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.

What Maths Looks Like at PBratton Primary School – White rose maths

Our main aims at Bratton Primary are to make our children fluent in solving calculations involving the four mathematical operations and to equip them with the tools to solve a variety of problems.  We follow the White Rose Maths scheme of work.  The units of work are, by necessity, organised into distinct areas, but pupils will make rich connections across mathematical ideas. Developing problem solving and reasoning skills is a thread that runs through all our Maths lessons. Children are constantly challenged to explain why, to prove how they know, to convince that they are correct or to find all possible outcomes. They have the opportunity to use a wide range of resources to support their learning such as hundred squares, number lines, Numicon, cubes, place value cards and other small apparatus as we follow a CPA approach in our delivery. Mathematical skills are developed across the curriculum in subjects such as Science, Design and Technology and PE.  Vocabulary is explicitly taught at the beginning of every lesson and in order to facilitate children to know more and remember more key concepts run through the whole of our curriculum and  opportunities to revisit previous learning are planned into every lesson.

Ultimately our Maths Curriculum is designed to:

– Embed those Maths skills that are vital throughout life. Research from the Institute of Education has shown: children who develop these skills early in life and who become confident with maths are more likely to: Stay in education longer; be in work as adults; earn more throughout their lives.                                                                                                                                                                                       – Ensure a good understanding of everyday maths which will help all children establish skills transferrable into all learning, such as: making more evidenced based decisions, problem solving, reasoning, rationalising and more clearly interpreting and understanding information. We also want children to see that maths will help them develop essential lifelong skills.                     – Challenge our children to make rich connections across mathematical concepts and to use their strong factual and procedural knowledge to help solve problems.

Maths at Bratton Primary:

Useful websites: