Maths at Downs Infants
We want all our children to develop a positive attitude to mathematics and see themselves as ‘mathematicians.’ The National Curriculum  recognises that mathematics ‘[It] is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment’. We aim to provide our children with a secure foundation for their mathematical understanding and a lifelong love of the subject.
In Reception the children develop their understanding of the number system and learn that we can represent numbers in different ways. There is, of course, lots of counting
Much of the children’s mathematical experience is through planned activities in the learning environment. Practitioners support and extend concepts as the children count, sort, classify and spot patterns to solve problems.
In Key Stage 1 the children continue to develop their ‘number sense,’ particularly through an understanding of place-value, equivalence and the relationships between operations, such as addition and subtraction. Again, we use a range of representations and equipment to support children in constructing their understanding. As children meet new concepts they explore them using practical apparatus before moving to the abstract signs and symbols. We aim to provide the children with ‘rich’ tasks not only to consolidate understanding of the number system but to develop reasoning and problem-solving skills. The children are encouraged to talk about their learning as they begin to decipher the ‘language’ of mathematics.
The overarching aims of the National Curriculum are for all children to develop fluency in the fundamentals of mathematics [‘number sense’], to be able to reason mathematically and be able to solve problems. But above all, we want the children to develop confidence in mathematics and enthusiasm for the subject!
The Maths Passport is a progressive strategy we use in school to help improve children’s recall of key number facts. Children need to be more secure than ever in the accuracy and speed of recall of key number facts. The Maths Passport provides a tried and tested way of achieving this.
The Passport begins with the very first steps in counting in the Early Years and moves all the way through to the 2/5/10 time tables and doubling and halving numbers in Year 2.
Children working on the Early Years targets will ‘travel’ around Brighton learning how to count forwards and backwards and developing 1 to 1 correspondence when counting objects. As children move to Key Stage 1, they begin to ‘travel’ around Europe and then China, developing their understanding and speed of recall of key number facts such as number bonds, doubling and halving and times table and division facts.
We would ask that you spend 10 minutes each day practising your child’s passport skills with them. This could be walking to school, in the car, at teatime, before bed – it doesn’t need to be a sit down, formal time. An information booklet of games to play and websites to use is available on the School Website.