The Five Part Journey
The Vision:
At Topcliffe we believe that mathematics is an important life skill and we endeavour to ensure that maths is relevant, enjoyable, challenging and above all a consistent approach across the whole school.
The Curriculum
At Topcliffe, we follow the National Curriculum mastery for mathematics while embracing other approaches and elements of Visual Maths and Numicon.
Children at Topcliffe become confident mathematicians though a progression of skills and strategies:
1) Through highly effective teacher modelling, children are exposed to concrete manipulatives in order to underpin early understanding of the key mathematical concepts being taught.
2) Children are given the opportunity to practice the key concepts in order to develop fluency.
3) To develop deeper conceptual understanding, the children are challenged through a series of probing questions which progress from application of fluency, through thinking, explaining, and reasoning through to Greater Depth using a range of concrete, visual and abstract methods.
At Topcliffe, we follow a cyclic approach which allows ALL children to revisit the key strands of the curriculum, which we believe gives the opportunity to progress through the journey from Fluency through to rich and complex questions
Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly should be challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems before acceleration through new content.’ Ofsted
In order to support a mastery curriculum in maths, Topcliffe’s aim is that all children become fluent mathematicians and are able to use and apply those skills in a range of contexts.
Therefore, children are guided through 5 areas of learning:
EYFS—Visual, Fluency and Thinking
KS1—Visual, Fluency, Thinking and Explaining in Y2
KS2—Visual, Fluency, Thinking, Explaining and Rich and Complex