Curriculum Intent

1. Home
2. Subjects
3. Mathematics

“Without mathematics, there’s nothing you can do. Everything around you is mathematics. Everything around you is numbers.”

- Shakuntala Devi

Our ambition is for our students to be problem solvers who are inquisitive and passionate about unlocking the hidden elements of the word around us. We teach skills and knowledge which builds and interleaves, leading to more complex problem solving. We scaffold learning in ways that help students to build on their current knowledge and then we support them to apply these new skills to unfamiliar problems and challenge them to never give up. Ultimately, our students will appreciate how mathematics allows us to understand the world.

Our Maths curriculum has been designed to enable our learners to:

• become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
• reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language
• solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and nonroutine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.

Students are given Sparx homework each week to support their learning in maths. This homework will consist of some specific topics which align with teaching in class and then some consolidation questions from previous weeks'/ years' homework. These together support students to build a solid knowledge base. It is important for students to get 100% or speak to a teacher about anything they do not understand before the due in date.

There are opportunities for students to complete an XP boost each week, which will give them more practice at the same level as their homework. There is also Target each week which will support students to improve their maths to the next stage in their learning. Whilst these are not compulsory elements of the homework, we would encourage students to utilise them.

A guide for parents can be found: https://sparxmaths.com/parents/