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Maths

Maths at Highwoods:

At Highwoods, we aim for all children to have a love of maths and to be confident and competent mathematicians.  We strive for our four school values to be encompassed through our enriching maths curriculum so that children can be INSPIRED to learn and be curious about maths; they BUILD RESILIENCE when encountering  mathematical challenges; children can ASPIRE to be the best that they can be and that the curriculum is ACCESSIBLE so that all children can succeed.

In our maths lessons, we aim to have elements of recall, fluency, reasoning and problem solving.  We are part of a working group embedding the teaching of mastery throughout our school.  This gives children opportunities to apply their learning in many different ways to make sure that they have a secure and deep understanding of all areas of the maths curriculum.

All of our year groups use the White Rose scheme of learning, but we also use materials from the National Centre of Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) and Nrich.

Maths Ambassadors:

Each year, children can apply to be Maths Ambassadors.  These children are very important in sharing their love of maths with others!  They also have the important role of helping to organise and run our annual 'Number Day' (see below for some photos of 2023) and they also have the chance to work with students from Essex University at our 'University maths club'.

University Maths Club:

We are very lucky here at Highwoods to have strong links with Essex University.  We are now in our third year of running our club along with students from the university.  This gives our students a fantastic opportunity to work on real-life maths beyond the classroom and encounter areas of maths that are outside of the primary maths curriculum.  This year our maths ambassadors are the first group that will be working on their project of 'Mission to Mars' where children will create their own number system and use their calculation skills to work out what they can take with them, calculate how much fuel they will need and also take part in some practical maths where they will design their own rocket and then calculate its speed!

Previous groups have also worked at using patterns in maths such as Pi and Fibonacci sequences, as well as looking at famous mathematicians such as Leonardo De Vinci.

We love maths at Highwoods - take a look at some of the learning around our school:

 

The Maths Curriculum Overview for all year groups can be downloaded here. Please download Information for Parents for each individual year group below.
 

Maths/Number Day 2023!

The children had an amazing day celebrating numbers and maths- there were lots of maths challenges, games and competitions, including a times tables battle and 'Estimate the sweets in the jar' challenge. Children could also dress up as numbers, or anything else linked to maths- lots of children took the opportunity to decorate plain white t-shirts with calculations, equations and maths problems! 

Useful Websites for Supporting Maths at Home.