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Our philosophy:
At Hardwick Green, our mathematics curriculum is designed to provide all pupils with a deep, secure and adaptable understanding of mathematical concepts. We follow the White Rose Maths scheme as our core framework, which is rooted in a mastery approach. This means that rather than rushing through topics, we focus on depth of understanding, ensuring that children grasp key concepts thoroughly before moving on.
The mastery approach, as promoted by the NCETM and White Rose Maths, is based on the belief that all children are capable of succeeding in mathematics. It emphasises small-step progression, intelligent practice, and the use of concrete, pictorial and abstract representations to build conceptual understanding. Lessons are carefully sequenced to revisit and build upon prior learning, supporting long-term retention and fluency. Teachers at Hardwick Green have the flexibility to adapt the order of blocks within the White Rose scheme based on ongoing assessment, ensuring that teaching is responsive to the needs of each class.
Our curriculum is underpinned by the five big ideas of mastery: Coherence, Representation and Structure, Mathematical Thinking, Fluency, and Variation. Coherence ensures learning is broken into small, connected steps. Representation and Structure help children visualise and understand mathematical concepts. Mathematical Thinking encourages reasoning and discussion. Fluency develops quick and accurate recall of facts and procedures. Variation exposes children to different examples and non-examples to deepen understanding. At Hardwick Green, we apply these principles flexibly, allowing teachers to vary the order and emphasis of content to meet the needs of their pupils.
To support fluency and automaticity, we run a daily Rapid Recall programme from Nursery to Year 4. This involves short, focused sessions at the start of each maths lesson, helping children to embed key number facts into their long-term memory. This complements our broader curriculum by freeing up cognitive space for reasoning and problem-solving.
We also use ‘Do Now’ activities at the start of lessons to implement spacing and interleaving—two evidence-based strategies from cognitive science. Spacing involves revisiting content over time, while interleaving mixes different types of problems and topics. Together, these approaches help pupils to strengthen their memory, make connections across mathematical ideas, and apply their knowledge flexibly.
Our curriculum is inclusive and ambitious for all learners. Teachers adapt the curriculum through support, questioning and representation, ensuring that every child has access to reasoning, problem-solving and fluency activities. We believe in a growth mindset and aim high for every pupil, recognising that attainment can change rapidly with the right support and opportunities.
Maths Curriculum
Maths Calculation Policy
Number Sense Maths
We use the three core programmes from Number Sense Maths to develop mathematical fluency in number facts.
Number Facts Fluency
The Number Facts Fluency Programme is a scheme of work focused entirely on addition and subtraction fact teaching, providing the structure and depth to number fact teaching that children need to achieve fluency. The programme teaches children to solve a defined set of addition and subtraction facts by applying key visuals, models and calculation strategies. Using the 12 strategies taught within the programme, children ‘use what they know to work out what they don’t know’. Explicit teaching of derived fact strategies is the most effective route to fluency in addition and subtraction facts. Teaching counting on approaches such as telling children to put the bigger number in their head and count on, or alternatively telling children to memorise facts, does not lead to fluency in all addition and subtraction facts for many children.
Key principles:
Research informed: The Number Facts Fluency Programme is grounded in research into the mathematical development of young children. It is supported by 10 years of classroom action research into how children best learn addition and subtraction facts, and by maths lesson observations in Shanghai. Children who are fluent in addition and subtraction facts tend to use derived fact strategies: they work out number facts they don’t know by relating them to ones they do know. Number Facts Fluency teaches all children these strategies.
Structured and systematic: The Number Facts Fluency Programme is modelled on the structured phonics programmes used to teach early reading. Just as schools can tell you where they teach each grapheme–phoneme correspondence in phonics, the fluency programme systematically teaches every addition and subtraction fact, leaving nothing to chance. The programme takes a defined set of addition and subtraction facts and maps each fact to one or more strategy groups. Each strategy group is then taught in turn. As children progress through the strategy groups, they develop visual pathways and learn important number relationships. The programme gives addition and subtraction facts the focus they need for children to become fluent in them, just as phonics gets the focus it needs to teach children to decode.
Highly visual: The Number Facts Fluency Programme is highly visual, drawing on our innate ability to recognise quantities without counting (subitise), and supported by structured models of number. The programme starts with children learning key visual representations for the numbers 1–10, including key dot arrangements, five and a bit finger arrangements and tens frame arrangements, many of which are developed in informal settings and games. From there, the programme uses carefully structured animations and graphics to build a pathway to number fact fluency. Visual scaffolds are provided to help children understand strategies and relationships as they are introduced, and are gradually withdrawn through the programme.
The facts and calculation strategies
At the heart of the Number Facts Fluency Programme are the Addition and Subtraction Grid Facts and the Calculation Strategies. The grids show all the addition and subtraction facts children need to become fluent in. These essential facts are the equivalent of times tables for addition and subtraction: all future addition and subtraction calculations use these building block facts. The programme teaches children fluency in these addition and subtraction facts through reasoning about relationships between numbers, quantities and calculations. The programme moves children beyond counting on their fingers to calculate these facts.
The coloured grids bring the facts and the strategies together: they show how the 12 strategies collectively lead to fluency in each and every fact. We think of these charts as being the equivalent of your grapheme–phoneme correspondence charts in phonics. In reality some facts are actually covered by more than one strategy, but the most important point is this: at the end of Number Facts Fluency Programme every child will have an alternative strategy to counting in ones for every addition and subtraction fact. Nothing is left to chance.
Number Sense Maths Strategies
Times Tables Fluency
At the core of this programme are 36 essential times table facts. The programme focuses on developing understanding and recall of these 36 facts, and on using them to know the commutative multiplication facts up to 9 x 9 and the inverse division facts. Later in the programme, in preparation for the Year 4 Multiplication Tables Check, the 11 and 12 times tables are also taught in a lighter touch way, as well as practice of the 10 times table.
At Hardwick Green, we believe that every child should experience the thrill of being a problem-solver in mathematics. Inspired by Gareth Metcalfe’s vision, our approach ensures that children not only learn mathematical procedures but also develop the resilience, creativity and flexibility needed to tackle rich, challenging problems.
We embed problem-solving deeply into our curriculum through consistent reasoning routines. These include activities like explaining common errors, ranking questions by difficulty, and exploring multiple possible answers. These routines are progressive across year groups and help children become independent thinkers. Importantly, we also prepare children for the emotional journey of problem-solving—acknowledging that confusion and frustration are part of the process, and that perseverance can lead to pride and excitement.
Our teaching strategies include deconstructing word problems to focus attention on key ideas before calculating answers. Children are encouraged to predict missing information, choose appropriate representations, and identify redundant details. We use ‘minimally different’ questions to highlight subtle changes in structure and pair problems with similar underlying maths but different surface features. This helps children make connections and think flexibly.
We also design sequences of challenges that build up problem-solving capacity. Teachers remove barriers by pre-teaching key knowledge or introducing the task format in advance. Tasks are adapted to ensure accessibility, and children are supported to persevere through comparison of approaches, visual modelling, and focused reflection. Follow-up challenges deepen understanding and encourage children to explore the same concept in varied contexts.
This vision is fully integrated into our broader curriculum. We follow the White Rose Maths scheme with adaptations, allowing teachers to reorder blocks based on assessment. Our Rapid Recall programme supports fluency, while ‘Do Now’ activities use spacing and interleaving to strengthen memory and promote flexible thinking.
At Hardwick Green, we don’t just teach maths—we build problem-solvers.