Maths
At Springwell, the Maths curriculum aims to help students develop their mathematical reasoning and maths problem solving to a deeper, higher, more advanced level. The aim is to make every child have the foundation of mathematical learning, essential to fulfilling his or her potential. It does this by:
- Enabling students to reason mathematically and be able to explain their ideas, ensuring students can create relationships and justify using mathematical language.
- Encouraging students to develop their mathematical and thinking skills through a variety of activities and learning approaches.
- Providing opportunities in the curriculum for all learners to be numerate enough to solve real world maths and become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics through varied and frequent practice, with regular recall to deepen and develop understanding.
Key Stage 3
At Key Stage 3, students cover the White Rose Maths curriculum, which not only meets the whole of the content of the 2014 National Curriculum, but is also designed to support the development of reasoning and problem solving, alongside fluency to ensure challenge and ambition for students.
The White Rose Maths curriculum combines the best of both ‘mastery’ and ‘spiral’ approaches. Students spend longer on topics to help gain deeper understanding and make connections. However, throughout the course students see topics again and again in different contexts and in different years to help them truly develop their understanding on their journey to mastery, and to promote independent learning and thinking skills. The White Rose Maths curriculum:
- Equips students to solve problems with mathematics, providing them with a wide range of skills and abilities, including deep mathematical knowledge and reasoning abilities.
- Ensures students are equipped with the relevant knowledge to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics and reason and problem solve, by applying their mathematics to a variety of familiar and non-familiar problems.
- Encourages students to explore mathematical problems and work together to solve them through discussion. Reason mathematically by following conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument or proof, using mathematical language.
Key Stage 4
At Key Stage 4, students continue the White Rose Maths curriculum that builds on the mastery skills learnt at Key Stage 3. The White Rose Maths curriculum:
- Ensures students develop fluent knowledge, skills and understanding of mathematical methods and concepts, to apply to problem solving concepts.
- Equips further developing skills into application, to problem solving and real life situations, as well as building on existing fluency and reasoning skills.
- Encourages students to develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately, particularly through the use of retrieval lessons in Year 11, where students encounter exam style questions on a regular basis.
