At Bedwell Primary School, we want all our pupils to experience deep, sustained understanding so that they become happy and confident mathematicians. Through a positive, practical approach, we will nurture confidence in the subject and a love of mathematics, enabling every child to reach their full potential. We promote a ‘can do’ attitude to maths without a fear of making mistakes. Children will be given time, support and resources to develop a depth of understanding where children can express ideas fluently, and talk about the subject using mathematical language. Using a spiral maths curriculum, we circle back to key concepts, in order for the children to retain more knowledge. This ‘sticky learning’ is embedded within the teaching of maths at Bedwell. 

Our key aims are to: 

• become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, through varied and frequent practice, so that pupils rehearse conceptual understanding and become confident in recalling and applying knowledge rapidly and accurately. 
• use age-appropriate mathematical vocabulary to reason effectively, and solve problems by applying their skills to a variety of problems with increasing challenge. 
• communicate, justify, argue and prove points using mathematical vocabulary through discussion. 
• develop their character (learning superheroes including resilience, confidence and independence, so that they contribute positively to the life of the school, their local, national and international community.

In order to do this, we base our teaching around the Herts for Learning Essential Maths planning tool. This ensures constant links are made between concrete,  pictorial and representations, so that all children can make rapid progress towards mastery of the curriculum. You can find out more about how we teach maths throughout the school in our Maths Policy.

Learning guides

Below you will find links to documents explaining what learning looks like in each year group:

• The Year 1 Learner
• The Year 2 Learner
• The Year 3 Learner
• The Year 4 Learner
• The Year 5 Learner
• The Year 6 Learner

This term's learning

Stay and Calculate - We've continued to run lots of events for parents and carers, and were delighted by the amazing turnout for some of our Stay and Calculate events in Year 5 and 6!  

Year 5 and 6 - Across all of our maths sets, a big focus this term was on measures. We completed lots of practical challenges to develop the ability to read scales precisely and measure mass, capacity and length. This also helped us to build an understanding of what 1kg or 1 litre ‘looks like’, so we can make sensible estimates and spot when answers just can’t be right.

Year 2 - Hedgehogs spent a long time learning how to tell the time and at last we think we have cracked it! We now know our o’clocks, half pasts, quarter to and quarter past. We’ve even tried using the language of ‘minutes to’ and ‘minutes past’ the hour.