Otley and Witnesham Partnership

Maths is used in every aspect of our lives at work and in practical everyday activities at home and beyond. We use maths when we go shopping, plan a holiday, or decorate a room. Good numeracy is essential to us as parents helping our children learn, as patients understanding health information, as citizens making sense of statistics and economic news. Decisions in life are so often based on numerical information: to make the best choices, we need to be numerate. (www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk)

Mathematics is therefore a core subject with high status in the Curriculum.  All children have a daily maths lesson as well as opportunities to use their skills in the context of other subjects across the curriculum.  The Partnership is committed to enabling all pupils to acquire good numeracy skills. All children are encouraged to explain their understanding and use mathematical vocabulary to express their understanding.

Number work is a major component of the Maths Curriculum. Throughout their primary years children use a range of materials and practical resources to support their learning. The White Rose Maths framework ensures mastery of concepts through concrete, pictoral and abstract understanding. Concepts are revisited regularly, allowing children the opportunity to consolidate and build upon their knowledge and skills. We aim to extend children’s understanding and use of the four number operations and children are encouraged to explore number relationships, sequences and patterns in order that they may develop a range of methods based on understanding.  Children are taught to apply this learning to solve a wide range of mathematical problems. As far as possible these problems are presented within real life contexts as appropriate to the children’s stage of learning.

We encourage children to explore, make predictions, analyse data, measure and compare in order to build on their understanding of the world around them and to maximise the opportunities for learning. Above all, we hope that the children we teach will be excited by their mathematical discoveries and so develop a passion for learning new skills and concepts.