Mathematics

Mathematics is a creative and highly interconnected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment.

Pupils need to be able to move fluently between each distinct topic, making rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems. Pupils need to become fluent in the key skills of mathematics through varied and frequent practice, need to show curiosity to reason mathematically and show persistence to solve problems by applying these skills.

In Year 7 pupils spend the first term continuing to develop their number theory through exploring sequence, place value, FDP equivalence and they are also introduced to basic algebra. The second term has a focus on and enhancing number work further, building on their knowledge of negative numbers and calculations. In the final term pupils get to explore geometric reasoning and interpreting data.

Year 8 begins with pupils recapping ratio and proportion and they then begin to explore where ratio and proportion occurs in similar shapes. They also build on their work on data, looking at more different ways to represent data. The second term has a focus on algebra skills including solving equations and rearranging formula. Constructing equations from a scenario test pupils reasoning and problem-solving skills. The topic is extended by constructing linear and non-linear graphs and understanding what the graphs represent. In the final term of Year 8 pupils study shape, symmetry and construction. They will end the year making conjectures and learning how to prove them.

In Year 9 the pupils finalise their Key Stage 3 studies including new topics such as Pythagoras, surds and 3D shape. They master expanding products of two or more binomials, factoring single brackets and begin to explore quadratic equations. Throughout the year the pupils will also study other topics in more depth, building on straight line graphs from Year 8. Other key foundations such as solving algebraic equations; fractions, decimals and percentages; probability and standard form will all be recapped and extended during the year.