Mathematics
Mathematics is a creative and highly inter-connected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. A high-quality Mathematics education therefore provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty and power of Mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.
The principal focus of mathematics teaching at Someries Infant School and Early Childhood Education Centre is to ensure that pupils develop confidence and mental fluency with whole numbers, counting and place value.
This involves working with numerals, words and the four operations, including with practical resources. Children also develop their ability to recognise, describe, draw, compare and sort different shapes and use the related vocabulary. We also teach children how to use a range of measures to describe and compare different quantities such as length, mass, capacity/ volume, time and money.
Numicon
Numicon is a quality-first teaching approach designed to give children the understanding of number ideas and number relationships that is essential for success in Mathematics. As a school, we use a series of structured patterns – Numicon Shapes – to represent numbers, as part of a progressive Mathematics teaching programme.
Here is a video explaining the Numicon approach in more detail:
Curriculum content
The six main areas of mathematics taught in nursery and reception are:
- Number – cardinality and counting
- Number – comparison
- Number – composition
- Pattern
- Measurement
- Geometry – shape and space
The seven areas of mathematics taught in year one are:
- Number – number and place value
- Number – addition and subtraction
- Number – multiplication and division
- Number – fractions
- Measurement
- Geometry – properties of shapes
- Geometry – position and direction
The eight areas of mathematics taught in year two are:
- Number – number and place value
- Number – addition and subtraction
- Number – multiplication and division
- Number – fractions
- Measurement
- Geometry – properties of shapes
- Geometry – position and direction
- Statistics
