St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary

Mathematics

Intent

At St Mary’s we understand that Mathematics is an essential tool for everyday life. It is critical to science, technology and engineering, and is necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. It is a whole network of concepts and relationships which provide a way of viewing and making sense of the world. It is used to analyse and communicate information and ideas and to tackle a range of practical tasks and real life problems. It also provides the materials and means for creating new imaginative worlds to explore.

Using the basis of the National Curriculum and the Mathematics Guidance for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 2020 and supplemented by a range of resources including the White Rose Maths Scheme and Learning by Questions, we want our children to have:

Access to an ambitious, wide and progressive maths curriculum in line with the National Curriculum 2014 and the updated Mathematics Guidance for Key Stage 1 and 2 (June 2020), in which they are given opportunities to develop a wide variety of maths skills and knowledge so that every child, including those with SEND have a positive attitude to mathematics, can achieve their full potential and develop an enthusiasm and love of maths showing and understanding of its importance in everyday life.
Fluency and confidence in arithmetic skills including all key operations of number.
Competence and confidence in their Mathematical knowledge, concepts and skills so that they can achieve well in Maths at various key stages throughout their school life.
The skills and resilience needed to solve problems, to reason, to apply knowledge, to think logically and to work systematically and accurately.
Confidence in choosing appropriate materials and apparatus that will aid their understanding and learning.
Initiative and an ability to work both independently and in cooperation with others.
An ability to communicate Mathematics and to confidently use age appropriate mathematical vocabulary.
An ability to use and apply Mathematics across the curriculum and in real life situations and to demonstrate their ability to read confidently within Maths lessons.
An understanding of Mathematics through a process of enquiry and experiment.
The ability to use technology and IT to support their learning in Maths.
A range of ‘cultural capital’ opportunities to enhance their learning experiences.

Implementation

In order that we achieve our intentions we want our staff to have:

High quality training and subject knowledge, to ensure that they are confident in their delivery of key mathematical concepts and that they are able to make clear links within the subject of maths as well as with other curriculum areas.
A passion for maths and the confidence to engage in a culture of sharing good practice, along with the ability to reflect on their own practice and to be open to new ideas and strategies which further enhance their teaching.
Well planned and sequenced lessons, following long and medium term plans that provide a progressive pathway of learning to enable children, including disadvantaged and children with SEND to make at least good progress in the subject of Maths.
Appropriate maths ‘tool kits’, readily available to provide concrete apparatus/ appropriate resources for children, that they can freely access to help them to develop their mathematical skills.
Excellent Assessment for Learning strategies whereby they can support, challenge and deepen children’s understanding within Maths, ensuring knowledge development so that children develop ‘sticky knowledge’, which becomes embedded.
Working Walls will be used to support pupils during lessons and across units of work. Working walls will include the display of Worked Examples and STEM sentences to support the development of reasoning and problem solving skills.
A high quality bank of resources, to be used alongside White Rose and Learning by Questions, that help pupils to develop their reasoning and problem solving skills in a systematic and progressive way (I see Maths).
A clear, shared commitment and ambition to ensure that all children achieve well, not only in their own class but also by the end of their time at St Mary’s.
High expectations of themselves and of all children and the desire to continually raise standards of teaching, learning and achievement for all pupils.
The skills to continually use formative and when appropriate summative assessments to check children’s understanding and to inform their future planning and teaching.
A shared commitment to raise reading standards by providing reading opportunities within lessons and thereby developing children’s fluency, confidence and enjoyment of reading.

Impact

The implementation of our Mathematics curriculum will lead to:

Good quality teaching and learning across all stages that is reflected and evidenced in:
Lessons
Workbooks (KS1 & KS2)
Floor books and Evidence Me (EYFS)
Pupils that are confident in their own skills and knowledge within the subject and who are able to identify areas where they need further practice.
End of KS2 statutory results which are consistently strong, with our standards of achievement in maths being consistently above the national average, therefore, our children will leave us with embedded knowledge and skills, which they take to their next stage of learning.
Pupils in Key Stage 1 being confident in their arithmetic skills, in their use of concrete materials to aid their learning and in their ability to confidently use pictorial recording if needed, to solve problems, therefore giving them a good grounding for the Key Stage 2 Mathematics
All children including those that are disadvantaged reaching their full potential in developing their mathematical skills.

Long Term Plans

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5

Year 6

Maths Policy

St Mary's Calculations Policy

Maths Vocabulary Progression Document

Maths Ready To Progress Document

KS1 & KS2 Maths Lessons

Year 3 finding right angles.

Here is just a few examples of Maths work Year 4 have been completing during lockdown. We are really trying to work on our reasoning skills and we are doing really well!