INFANT CURRICULUM – MATHS

At Cunningham Hill Infant school, we want the children to see mathematics as relevant to their world and applicable to everyday life, as well as being something that they will need as they move on through their school life and ultimately to the world of employment. Through well-structured Maths lessons and in line with the National Curriculum, the Mathematics learning will enable the children to become numerically fluent, with an emphasis in knowing and using number facts; apply Maths to problem-solve in a variety of ways; reason by communicating about what they are doing and what they have learnt in Maths, using correct Mathematical language. The school’s focus is to deepen and broaden children’s understanding, leading to mastery with depth. We want children to master concepts so they have the resilience to tackle Maths in a large variety of contexts, including particular scenarios they have not previously experienced.

To meet these aspirations, from Reception to Year 2, we use the ‘Herts Essentials Maths’ programme of study for progression, supplemented with opportunities for deeper reasoning through investigations and open ended tasks. We implement a concrete-pictorial-abstract approach to learning Maths, which gives the children a deeper understanding of the various concepts taught. The children are encouraged to use a range of manipulatives to deeper their understanding and then ‘Mastery Checkpoints’ and other problem solving tasks are built into our planning to develop children’s conceptual understanding, enabling them to apply their skills to different problems