In Maths at Stanton Cross, we use the White Rose scheme. This is a scheme of learning that has been carefully planned and developed over several years to meet the national curriculum aims. This is a widely adopted scheme nationally and one that encourages children to become fluent in a concept, before learning and applying reasoning and problem-solving skills.
What is the intent of the White Rose Maths curriculum?
The long-term aim is to produce an ambitious, connected curriculum accessible to all pupils right through from Reception to the end of Year 6. The curriculum covers all the content set out within the National Curriculum and provides comprehensive teacher information for each step.
How is the White Rose Maths curriculum different to any other? What skills does it develop?
We want pupils to become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, to be able to reason and to solve problems. The White Rose curriculum embraces these National Curriculum aims and provides guidance to help pupils to become:
Visualisers – we use the CPA (Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract) approach to help pupils understand mathematics and to make connections between different representations.
Describers – we place great emphasis on mathematical language and questioning so pupils can discuss the mathematics they are doing and then support them to take ideas further.
Experimenters – as well as being fluent mathematicians, we want pupils to love and learn more about mathematics.
Why is the White Rose Maths curriculum ordered in the way it is?
To learn mathematics effectively, some things have to be learnt before others, e.g. place value needs to be understood before working with addition and subtraction, addition needs to be learnt before looking at multiplication (as a model of repeated addition). There is an emphasis placed on number throughout the curriculum, as this is the foundation that everything else is based on. For some other topics, the order isn’t as crucial, e.g. Shapes and Statistics need to come after number, but don’t depend on each other. We try to mix these so pupils have as wide a variety of mathematical experiences as possible in each term and year.
How Stanton Cross uses the White Rose Scheme of Learning
White Rose have broken down each area of the National Curriculum into small steps. For each of these, they have created teaching slides and work materials that the teachers adapt to the needs of their class and then use in lessons. In addition to the White Rose materials, we also use resources from other schemes, to both support and extend children within the National Curriculum area.
In order to support the children with their learning, we regularly use physical resources to ensure concepts are fully embedded. We use a range of manipulatives, including place value counters, base ten and multi-link cubes.
