At King Offa, we aim to create lifelong mathematicians who carry with them an appreciation of the beauty and power of maths. We achieve this by challenging the notion of ‘I can’t do maths’. Lessons are carefully designed so that children can recall previous knowledge and then build in small steps on what they already know to learn new concepts. This enables children to keep up rather than catching up.

Our lesson design follows an ‘I do, we do, you do’ approach with plenty of opportunities for children to see, do and share ideas and procedures. All lessons provide a chance for children to independently apply what they have learnt. Children who grasp concepts rapidly are challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems, to foster a depth of understanding.  

Our maths progression document outlines the clear objectives that each child is expected to achieve in each year group. We expect that the majority of our children will move through our programme of study at broadly the same pace. Teachers carefully plan well-structured lessons focusing on the importance of place value, the four operations and fractions. All lessons begin with recall questions to ensure children are repeatedly recalling previous learning from across the terms and weeks. Lesson design identifies the new mathematics that is to be taught, the key points, the difficult points and a carefully sequenced journey through the learning.

We carry out termly maths assessments to monitor progress, set targets, and plan subsequent lessons. From these assessments, our teachers create a gap analysis and then follow the skills outlined in our progression document so that our teaching is always tailored to our classes needs. In Reception and Year 1, our children are assessed via teacher assessment using trust wide assessment materials which appropriately assess the stages of development for our younger children. In Years 2 to 6 we use Star assessment, a computer programme to complete termly assessment.

We empower children to be resilient problem solvers by providing them with the fundamental knowledge, mathematical language and fluency needed to tackle any new concept. At King Offa, you will see children exploring mathematical procedures using concrete, pictorial and abstract representations, which enables pupils to gain a relational understanding of underlying concepts and using mathematical language to reason.

Finally, when teachers enjoy learning, they actively promote the subject that they are teaching and consequently, share their passion with their students. A big part of training for maths at King Offa is developing this passion within our teaching staff so that children take on our love of math’s beauty and power.