Curriculum Intent and Vision
Our Mathematics curriculum is designed to provide our students with the opportunity to develop secure knowledge, communicate their understanding fluently and confidently and explore mathematical methods and concepts. Our curriculum is centred around 6 key concepts which are, Number, Algebra, Geometry, Ratio and proportion, Probability and Statistics. Our ambitious curriculum builds on prior knowledge and allows students to experience links between these ideas with a depth over breadth teaching approach. We ensure that fluency with declarative and procedural knowledge is secure before moving onto conditional knowledge where students are required to problem solve. This helps to alleviate maths anxiety and students build a positive relationship with Mathematics. We aim to ensure students acquire, select and apply mathematical techniques to solve problems, within mathematical and wider contexts.
As a faculty, we aspire to show students that Maths has a satisfying beauty, which in its simplest form is either right or wrong. We’re passionate about enabling our students to achieve their full mathematical potential, to equip them to successfully attain their future goals and succeed in an ever changing world. By providing opportunities to reason mathematically, draw conclusions and communicate mathematical information, we aim to create resilient, accomplished mathematicians with a passion for the subject. We encourage students to take ownership of their learning and take pride in how they communicate their mathematics.
Cultural Capital
In Maths we aim to equip students with the tools to be successful in life and contribute positively to our society.
In lessons, students are given opportunities to share and collaborate ideas, discover solutions to problems and build confidence in this subject area. Students will also see maths in multiple real life contexts and learn how to make estimates to problems without much information. This number sense is key to adulthood and they will rely on this when they encounter bills, budgeting and risk taking in the future. We are keen to build independence when learning so they are encouraged to mark their work, make choices in lessons and reflect on their progress made.
Students are also given opportunities to take part in competitions against other schools and in the UK maths challenge. This competitive element helps develop their confidence in unfamiliar circumstances and helps build their awareness of other schools and abilities of students.
Whether our students become excellent problem solvers, diverse thinkers or creative explorers, we hope that our maths curriculum gives students opportunities to grow and shine as mathematicians and are prepared for the world of work and their future.
Curriculum Journey
This is a map to show the learning journey in Maths from year 6 through to further education and possible careers.
Maths Curriculum Journey.pdfOverview of the learning journey in Maths
Year 7
Students in year 7 will develop their proportional reasoning and probability skills to solve real life problems. They will deepen their understanding of shape through the manipulation of area, perimeter and volume. They will begin to solve problems by representing unknowns with algebra, interpret data using averages and challenge their accuracy when drawing, interpreting and measuring. They will expand on their existing knowledge of shape properties to solve multi–step problems, requiring them to reason accurately.
Year 8
Students in year 8 will deepen their sense and understanding of number by identifying and using primes, factors, multiples and indices. They will manipulate shapes on a 2D axis using transformations and even combinations of multiple transformations. They will bring their work to life when looking at compound measures and relationships between different variables. Their understanding of probability will strengthen when looking at independent and dependent events as they move away from labelling probability with words and use fractions, decimals and percentages to calculate them. Students will also be able to apply their coordinate plotting skills to questions involving straight line graphs and equations of straight lines.
Year 9
Students in year 9 will begin to apply their inverse operation skills to solve linear equations and inequalities, these skills will become increasingly important through the rest of their time studying Maths to a higher level. They will also apply their algebraic skills to find terms in a sequence and identify the nth term. Students will be taking a jump from angles in basic 2D shapes to angles in all polygons and parallel lines and they will also look at calculating the surface area and volume of more complex 3D shapes. In addition they will also learn how to unpick data and draw conclusions using averages and skills to analyse data.
Year 10
Students in year 10 will go really in depth when learning about ratio and proportion, they will learn how to manipulate skills to solve complex problems and they will even begin to see algebra mix in with these skills. All students will encounter trigonometry this year at varying levels and will also learn how to apply their skills to solve complex problems in 2D and 3D shapes. Multiplicative reasoning will become a large focus without them even realising and they will see it with compound interest, growth, decay, direct proportion and inverse proportion. Quadratics will form a large part of algebra work, whether its factorising, solving, graphing or rearranging. Students will encounter circles in a new light and will have to use some complex skills to find the area and circumference of and apply circle theorems.
Year 11
Year 11 students will see many topics come together this year and they will begin to encounter questions which contain 2 or more different topics, this is why confidence and fluency in the the skills learnt over the previous years is vital to being able to apply them to solve complex problems. Students will encounter some final topics before preparing for their exams, including vectors and reciprocals. Foundation students will investigate indices and standard form and the students aiming for the higher GCSE will solve direct and inverse proportion problems by building formulae. All students will need to be able to apply any skill to solve problems and reason accurately which will also be worked on throughout the year
