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 throughout our school, from Pre-School to Year Six.

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

White Rose Programme of Study for all year groups

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 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.

Calculation Strategies

Our parent booklets provide an overview of the calculation strategies used in each year group. Please scroll down to download the booklets.

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, please see Parent Guides below.

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 in the parent guides below.

There are a wide range of materials and resources available to support your child with their maths at home. In Key Stage Two, the expectation is that children practice their times tables fluency. All children have a log-in for Times Tables Rock Star which can be used at home as a way to practice this times tables fluency. Please see the video below for more information on the different game types: