St Columba's RC Primary School

Maths

Maths is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment.  At St Columba's, we are committed to providing all our pupils with high-quality teaching in maths that gives them a firm foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.

Vision Statement

 Our Vision Statement for Maths at St Columba's details our core beliefs and aims for maths teaching in all classes and for all children in our school.

                                                                                       Mathematics Intent, Implementation and Impact

Intent

At St Columba’s our intent for mathematics is to teach a high-quality Maths curriculum that is both challenging and enjoyable.  We aim for all of our pupils to be able to reason, problem solve and develop fluent conceptual understanding in each area of the Maths curriculum.  We aspire for them to be confident mathematicians, who are not afraid to take risks.

The focus of our Maths curriculum is not on rote learning but on relational understanding.  Pupils are encouraged to think mathematically and are introduced to new concepts using the Concrete, Pictorial and Abstract (CPA) approach. Using real life contexts helps children to develop skills they can use in their everyday lives. It gives Maths meaning and it makes Maths more fun!

Our curriculum allows children to better make sense of the world around them.  We intend for our pupils to be able to apply their mathematical knowledge to science and other subjects. We want them to know that it is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment.

Implementation

At St Columba’s, we have used the Mathematics programme of study from the National Curriculum to create our own medium-term plans.  This ensures that our children have access to a broad and balanced Maths curriculum and also have the opportunity to revisit topics several times over the year thus allowing their knowledge to embed.

All children are catered for within the maths lessons, ensuring that the teacher offers the necessary support and challenge for each individual to make progress. We ensure that maths is taught in creative and engaging lessons using a wide array of maths manipulatives to aid and support our children in their learning. ICT is used across each year group to deliver the maths curriculum and to offer our pupils a range of exciting activities to challenge and inspire.

We aim to encourage the deepest of learning for our children so that their knowledge can be transferred and applied in many contexts including other subjects e.g. science and DT and their everyday lives. Maths is widely promoted across the school and our classrooms have working walls that the children can utilise to support their learning.

Our aim is to ensure that the three core areas of the national curriculum are covered in all our lessons: fluency, reasoning and problem solving. We offer the children the opportunity to have varied and frequent practice of their maths skills with the focus on their ability to recall and apply their knowledge rapidly and accurately. Reasoning is a key area in all our lessons as our children need to be able to describe, explain, convince, justify and prove to be successful in this subject.

Mathematical vocabulary is an essential part of each lesson and the children need to understand this within the area they are studying and be able to make rich connections across other areas within this subject. Maths lessons at St Columba’s provide children with the opportunity to acquire new knowledge and understanding, deepen their mathematical understanding, reason through their ideas, use their mathematical language to explore a line of enquiry and problem solve.  We hope to build problem-solvers of the future and build resilience in our children; essential skills they can use in all aspects of their learning.

All Maths lessons at St Columba’s have the following key elements:

1. Counting practice
2. Fluency work
3. Main teaching activity
4. Challenge plenary

All lessons will cater for the individual needs of the children and include some element of reasoning and problem solving. Questioning is a key part of the maths lesson – letting the children demonstrate what they know and challenging them every step.  Teaching assistants will be used throughout the lesson to support individuals and groups of learners, including those who require additional help and the more able learners who need an extra level of challenge.

The mapping of Mathematics across school shows clear progression in line with age related expectations. Teachers and governors are kept regularly informed of developments in our frequently reviewed curriculum. Teachers and teaching assistants are supported and aided in their roles, ensuring confidence in the skills and facts they are required to teach.

Impact

The impact of our mathematics curriculum is that children understand the relevance of what they are learning in relation to real world concepts. We have fostered an environment where Maths is fun and it is OK to be ‘wrong’ because the journey to finding an answer is most important.

Our maths books, including both individual workbooks and the class big maths books, are packed with a range of activities showing evidence of fluency, reasoning and problem solving. Our feedback and interventions are supporting children to strive to be the best mathematicians they can be, ensuring a greater proportion of children are on track.

Our children have the confidence to ‘have a go’ and choose the equipment they need to help them to learn, along with the strategies they think are best suited to each problem.  The children in all year groups are developing skills in being articulate and are able to verbally, pictorially and in written form reason well.

Our school standards are high, we moderate our books both internally and externally, and children are achieving well from their personal starting points.

St Columba's Maths Policy

Our Maths policy provides detail on the teaching of Maths at St Columba's, including the use of the concrete pictorial abstract approach.

Calculation Policy

Our school's calculation policy follows the concrete, pictorial and abstract approach, which means that the children first experience the maths in a practical hands-on way, followed by representing the maths using pictures before finally moving to abstract, written methods.  If you are unsure on any of the methods contained within the policy, your child's class teacher will be happy to talk through them with you.

Progression in Maths

The following documents detail the progression in the different areas of Maths learning from Years 1 to 6:

Mathematical Vocabulary

The development of the children's use and understanding of vocabulary is a key priority within our school.  The following document lists all the mathematical vocabulary that the children will be taught in each year group.

National Curriculum For Maths At Key Stages One and Two

 The National Curriculum for Maths at Key Stages One and Two, as issued by the Department For Education in September 2013,  is detailed below