“We aim to send all young people into an ever-changing world able and qualified to play their full part in it.”

Curriculum

Maths

Subject Staff

Mr Jones

Mr Wood

Miss Carton

Mr Kilshaw

Mr Wilson 

Miss Eyre

Mr Schozstak

Exam Board

Edexcel

The Maths Way

Our subject has a ‘Subject Way’ at the heart of it. Our Subject Way is designed to help students become young subject specialists. The Subject Way has two main purposes:

Firstly, to teach students the vital skills they need to achieve their full potential and gain the very best grades they can. Secondly, to teach students how each subject relates to the wider world, incorporating the life skills they will learn.

It is our belief that knowing how what you learn links to the wider world, brings a subject to life and therefore improves overall understanding and engagement.

Curriculum Intent

At Wickersley Partnership Trust we understand that getting the curriculum right for each and every individual student is the single most important factor in ensuring progress, encouraging positive engagement and raising aspirations.

At Wickersley Partnership Trust, we want all students to leave able and qualified to play their full part in an ever-changing world through an ambitious, creative and innovative curriculum, which empowers students with the skills, knowledge and attributes to allow them to succeed in their next phase of education and their working life.

We aim to engender a love of learning, self-belief and aspiration through four key intentions:

  • The removal of barriers to learning
  • Developing skills for learning
  • Developing personal attributes (School Way)
  • Enriching student experiences and broadening their horizons

 

Our curriculum is not driven by performance tables. It is our belief that a strong, broad, balanced curriculum, tailored to individual needs, can remove barriers to learning and allow all students to access the curriculum appropriate to them and will therefore meet their individual needs.
We believe in a strong foundation of core subjects including English, Maths and Science. All students who are identified with deficits in literacy and numeracy are given additional curriculum support. These core fundamental skills are essential in both accessing our broad curriculum offer and the next stage of life; be it education, employment or training.

 

INTENTION 1 – The removal of barriers to learning

We want all our students to go out into the world, and become successful, happy, fulfilled adults who will be good citizens and make a positive contribution to society. The acquisition of basic skills is either at the heart of achieving this or a barrier to learning and prevents students from fully flourishing. Four common barriers, if left unchallenged, will limit the progress, engagement and development of students who access our curriculum.

They are:

  • Literacy
  • Numeracy
  • Oracy
  • Vocabulary

 

We see these barriers as a high priority for the school. In order to prevent them from becoming a barrier for student development and progress we implement (and closely monitor) the following strategies:

LITERACY
Ensuring learners access reading and writing opportunities within a Maths lesson is non-negotiable. Learners regularly work on worded problems and investigations, all of which require learners to build on their literacy skills and give reasoning for their answer. Goal free problems are also used as a method to assist learners with their approach to questions that may require more reasoning or literacy skills.

Our assessments are carefully written to ensure that learners are regularly assessed on reasoning and problem solving questions and the weighting of these questions is in line with that of formal examinations. Learners are encouraged to underline key terminology and identify what is needed to complete the problem.

NUMERACY
Naturally, numeracy is one of the barriers that Mathematics focuses on intensely as numerical proficiency correlates well with success in Mathematics. We aspire to remove the barrier that numerical fluency places in front of effective study of Mathematics. We make use of numeracy tasks to give learners the opportunity to practise, discuss and embed skills that we feel are critical for future success. Number plays a large role within the Mathematics curriculum and is interleaved multiple times over the five-year journey to embed and develop numeracy skills. Our numeracy intervention is well sequenced and supplements the curriculum to ensure that all learners leave numerate.

ORACY
Whilst communicating in a written medium is important, being able to communicate complex mathematical ideas effectively is essential for learners to thrive. Staff model mathematical language during lessons and encourage opportunities to allow students to develop an argument, justification or proof. Questioning, discussion and reasoning is how we encourage learners to approach their lessons so that they can articulate their understanding of abstract topics to further their learning and improve their confidence when speaking in front of peers.

VOCABULARY
Mathematics is a subject that is almost like a language in its own right and learners being confident of word definitions often makes the difference between understanding a question or not. As such, we focus on vocabulary and command words each lesson giving learners the support they need to understand the words. It is our aim to make our learners “word rich” so that they can speak and write about Mathematics with confidence. The Frayer Model is used within the curriculum to expose learners to academic language on a regular basis.

 

INTENTION 2 – Developing skills for learning

Developing student knowledge and essential learning skills go hand in hand. Students need to remember with fluency in order to be fully established mini-subject specialists. We strive, at all times, for personal excellence by developing the six key skills for success:

  • Recall
  • Interpretation
  • Creativity
  • Analysis
  • Evaluation
  • Divergent thinking

 

Retrieval is an essential skill in Mathematics. The ability to apply and recall knowledge quickly is crucial to support progression in Mathematics as it frees up working memory to allow learners to engage with problem solving. We interleave previously studied content by using retrieval tasks as lesson starters labelled ‘flashback’. Our curriculum follows a mastery approach giving learners time to persevere, work on topics in-depth for longer periods of time, thus enabling learners to move fluently between mathematical ideas.

In order to ensure that pupils have the required prerequisite knowledge, the curriculum highlights the key skills for each small step and these are embedded within lessons as ‘get ready’ tasks. If the required knowledge isn’t there, lessons are adapted to ensure that all pupils are able to access the lesson and are appropriately supported and challenged.

Generalisation in Mathematics takes the patterns that we see in number, algebra and geometry and tries to define a rule for those patterns. We use modelling, derivations and investigations in class to help learners develop their interpretation, analysis and evaluation skills as they seek to generalise what is often abstract content. Problem solving is also a crucial part of Mathematics allowing learners to think creatively.

We structure our curriculum to allow learners more time on each strand of learning to not only embed skills but also to facilitate the time to engage with solving problems that link together the vast plethora of Mathematics they study.

 

INTENTION 3 – Fostering personal attributes

Our curriculum promotes the skills and attributes our children need in order to develop the independence, responsibility, accountability and resilience they need to have a happy and successful life. We refer to this crucial aspect of our curriculum intent as The School Way and it is embedded in everything we do.

The School Way enables us to develop well-rounded individuals ready for the next stage. It is about embedding employability skills such as resilience, collaboration, communication, aspiration, responsibility, tolerance and respect in order for them to be an active participant in the local community and beyond.

The School Way is embedded in assemblies, form periods and our extra-curricular programme. It is the language that we speak and key aspects of the School Way are as follows:

  • We are nice to people
  • We say please and thank you
  • We are equipped to learn
  • We work hard
  • We are prepared to make mistakes
  • We listen to others
  • We believe in ourselves
  • We are proud of our achievements
  • We take pride in our appearance
  • We take responsibility for our actions
  • We are ambitious
  • We take risks

 

INTENTION 4 – Enriching student experiences and broadening their horizons

Our intent is that all students have a full understanding of how to develop themselves as well rounded citizens, maintain healthy relationships and understand how to keep themselves safe both online and in their day-to-day life. We want all students to know what options are open to them in the future and understand the routes they have in order to progress on their life journey. Our curriculum will include:

  • Exposing learners to worded problem-solving questions based on real life situations
  • Measuring distances and working with time in PE lessons
  • Tabulating and graphing results in Science and Geography lessons
  • Opportunities throughout the curriculum that expose learners to careers involving mathematical knowledge and skills.
  • Opportunities throughout the curriculum to learn about Mathematics in different cultures and across the ages
  • Celebrating mathematical focus days (such as Pi Day and Number Day)
  • Emphasis on financial Maths skills during Money Matters Week in Key Stage 3 in line with the PSHE curriculum
  • Encouraging participation in Maths challenges (such as UKMT and AMSP individual and team events)
  • Exposure to subject focused trips (such as visiting The Deep and Market Rasen Racecourse)
  • Participation in lectures and events involving external speakers
  • Puzzle clubs to encourage curiosity and logical thinking

Curriculum

Key Stage 3

Using KS2 results, students are placed in sets on entry to school. Students have three 80 minute Maths lessons each week. The topics studied build in difficulty and we aim to ensure the KS2 skills are solid before working up to GCSE standards. The department uses regular assessments and ‘sticker tasks’ to assess the understanding that students have developed, thus allowing us to plan their next steps and meet their needs more effectively. Each assessment will be followed by a bespoke intervention task for each pupil, allowing them to work on and improve in any areas they may struggled with.

Key Stage 4

All students have three lessons per week and the course is assessed by three terminal papers, each lasting 90 minutes and worth 80 marks per paper. Students work towards the Edexcel Linear GCSE (two calculator papers and one non-calculator paper). Tiers of entry for each student is carefully considered to allow every student to achieve their best possible outcome at the end of Y11.

We aim for students to enjoy Maths and increase their confidence, building on the skills and understanding they have formed in KS3. Students need to be able to use and apply their Maths in real world settings, particularly with the new focus on problem solving and mathematical reasoning at GCSE. Students are supported and their progress carefully monitored throughout the course. There will be some students who will require additional support; and they will be able to access intervention as appropriate.

Students have regular topic tests and these, alongside homework, allow staff to check the ongoing understanding of the students. The use of mock exams in both Y10 and Y11 allows the students to be comfortable and confident in an examination setting as well as helping them to target their revision more effectively. Home learning includes vle.MathsWatch.co.uk for both homework and independent revision. Other recommended sites include corbettmaths.com and mathsgenie.co.uk.

Careers in the Curriculum

Throughout our KS3 curriculum all pupils will link their learning to other subjects. Every half term pupils will see a different subject and the connections between what they have learnt throughout their time at RCS. Please see an example below of how a Year 7 lesson links to History and the understanding of reading from tables.

 

Money Matters Curriculum

As well as exposing our pupils to their Maths lessons, all pupils will be exposed to a “Money Matters Curriculum.” These sessions will be delivered in their Maths lessons and link real life financial elements to help prepare all of our students leave school able and qualified to enter the real world.

Department Staff

L Brown

Director

S Carton

J Wood

J Kilshaw

M Wilson

S Eyre

Revision