Maths
At Somerdale Educate Together our approach to teaching Mathematics fosters and promotes our ethos and beliefs that all children can achieve and succeed.
We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework and the National Curriculum, using the White Rose Maths scheme to form the basis of our planning. Pre-School provision uses a play-based mastery approach using adult-led investigation time alongside opportunities to explore, develop and consolidate mathematical learning throughout the day where adults in provision will provide support and scaffolding where contextually appropriate.
What is White Rose Maths?
The White Rose Maths ‘schemes of learning’ are hugely popular with schools in the UK and in many other countries, too. They also produce many other resources to help increase both fun and success in maths. Rooted in globally respected research, the resources are written by experienced, practising teachers and are available for pupils from nursery and primary years and through secondary school to GCSE.
For each year group, the scheme of learning comprises of individual blocks of learning about a particular topic with lots of time spent on building strong number skills. These important core skills lay a solid foundations for more complicated learning later on.
Each block of knowledge is divided into a series of small learning steps. Together, these small steps cover all the curriculum content that your child needs to know.
Brain science tells us that by learning maths in small, related chunks, your child will remember more. White Rose uses the best available research to map out the crucial learning steps that will help your child to understand clearly what they are learning.
You can find out more about our approach to Maths by viewing our Maths policy below.
Article 28 - Every child has the right to an education.
The Curriculum Overview
Click here for our Maths Policy which also contains our approach in Pre-School.
You can find out which units your child is currently learning by checking your child's class termly newsletter. These are on the class Google Drive, which you can get to via the class pages.
You can then navigate to the parent section of White Rose to find more advice on the block of learning and the small steps taught.
This shows you what each class plans to cover across the year.
Our teachers adapt the scheme dependent on the need of the class, so for the latest information, check your class Google drive folder for the termly overviews which will advise you of the planned learning for each week.
Calculation Strategies
The helpful documents below show you how we teach different skills across the year groups.
Number Sense
In Year One and Year Two, children have a 15-minute number sense session four times a week alongside regular maths sessions. Number Sense is also used as an intervention for children in Key Stage Two who need extra support to recall their number facts.
Number sense is a number Facts fluency programme which teaches a core set of number facts and the calculation strategies that are used to solve them. Modelled on the phonics programmes used in early reading, the programme groups the grid facts and teaches them systematically alongside the calculation strategies that can be used to solve them. All facts are taught comprehensively on the path to fluency. To see the number facts taught, and for more information on the different strategies used, click on the links below.
Subtraction Facts Grid
Description of Calculation Strategies
Times Tables
We know that children who can recall facts enjoy and are able to secure the maths curriculum easier than the children who can’t recall these facts. We also know from research that depth is much more important than speed.
At Somerdale we teach times table fluency separately from application of these facts in Lower Key Stage Two. We use a variety of activities which develop reasoning to secure number facts whilst almost always teaching other linked aspects of the curriculum at the same time. We have a systematic, whole class approach to teaching the times tables and it is taught little and often, for a few minutes a couple of times each day.
We follow these key principles when teaching times tables in Key Stage Two:
-We learn each number sentence as a memorised phrase by repeating the sound pattern out loud.
We learn each fact one way round only.
4 x 6 = becomes six fours are twenty four.
We always state the larger number first. The children very quickly become attuned to this and it helps in the learning process.
We learn one new fact at a time. We will look at 6 x 6 = 36 one day. Then 7 x 6 = the following day.
We don’t think about the answers – we want them to become known facts so we leave the answers on the board.
You can see an overview of the building block facts that make up times tables and where they are taught by viewing the summary below.
Times Table Summary
Resources to support at home:
This year we are developing maths booklets for parents full of ideas on how you can help your child with their maths skills at home, and to explain the different models we use to teach maths in school.
We also hope to bring you some parent workshops, specific to each year group.
White Rose Maths provides parent booklets you may find useful for home: https://whiterosemaths.com/for-parents/parent-workbooks/
White Rose Maths also provide short videos which can be used during remote learning: https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/
A parent guide to multiplication
Pre-School Maths Parent Guide (See Pre-School Google Drive)
Reception Maths Parent Guide (See Reception Google Drive)
Year One Maths Parent Guide (Coming soon!)
Year Two Maths Parent Guide (Coming soon!)
Year Three Maths Parent Guide (Coming soon!)
Year Four Maths Parent Guide (Coming soon!)
Year Five Maths Parent Guide (Coming soon!)
Year Six Maths Parent Guide (Coming soon!)
