Maths @ Pendeen
Mathematics is a tool for everyday life and children use maths as a way of viewing and making sense of the world. At Pendeen School, we believe everyone can achieve in maths. We aim to develop a positive ‘can do’ attitude towards maths and an excitement towards it. We nurture a positive attitude where mistakes are seen as an opportunity for learning; encouraging them in the belief that by being resilient they can achieve anything they aspire to.
We wish to enable our children to achieve mastery in mathematics by providing learning opportunities to:
- become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics developing declarative knowledge through varied and frequent practice, so that pupils develop understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. Children will be able to show their understanding through the sentence stem, ‘ I know that…’
- reason mathematically developing procedural knowledge through having a specific purpose of each strategy to use, which includes breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and utilising determination in seeking a solution, developing a justification or proof (‘show me, prove it, convince me’) using mathematical language such as ‘I know how…’
- Use a combination of declarative and procedural knowledge to transform in to strategies to solve problems by applying their mathematical reasoning to a variety of different contexts, ‘I know when…’
At Pendeen, we follow a mastery led model for teaching of mathematics. Sequences of learning are built in small steps which emphasises gradually building upon understanding – effectively supporting children in becoming proficient mathematicians. We link this closely to the five big ideas of fluency, variation, representation and structure, mathematical thinking, and coherence.