Maths

“Encouraging you to engage with and enjoy maths through hands-on learning, problem-solving and building numeracy skills for life”.  

Our maths curriculum is based around the NCETM’s mastery approach. This is underpinned by five key concepts: 

1. Coherence – Teaching is sequenced to enable a coherent learning progression through the curriculum, providing access for all pupils. The aim is for students to develop a deep and connected understanding of mathematics that they can apply and communicate in a range of contexts. All our pupils study the same mathematical concepts at the same time. This allows us to meet our pupils where they are at, whilst ensuring the appropriate level of challenge for all students within the classroom.  
2. Representation and structure – Teachers carefully select concrete materials and pictorial representations of mathematics to expose the underlying structure of the concept. The Concrete Pictorial Abstract approach can be cycled through to help students gain and deepen their understanding. Seeing maths represented in more than one way helps to embed learning. 
3. Fluency – Efficient, accurate recall of key number facts and procedures are essential for fluency, freeing pupils’ minds to think deeply about concepts and problems. It requires pupils to have the flexibility to move between different contexts and representations of mathematics, to recognise relationships and make connections, to explain their ideas and to choose appropriate methods and strategies to solve problems. 
4. Variation – The purpose of variation is to draw closer attention to a key feature of a mathematical concept or structure through varying some elements while keeping others constant. Through variation the teacher focuses thinking and discussion on the key feature in question. 
5. Mathematical Thinking – Giving students the opportunity to spot patterns, make links, reason and generalise. Taking the focus away from getting the ‘answer’ and encouraging students to explain, justify and question. 

We measure impact through: 

• Baseline assessments at the start of each unit. The question level analysis of the student and class results allows teaching to focus on areas for development and ensure that students are given an appropriate level of challenge 

• Assessments at the end of each term to show progress 
• NGMT testing twice a year to monitor the attainment of Keystone students against students nationally.  

Click the overviews below to see our planning documents

Click the overviews below to see our progression of skills