St Gregory's

Maths at St Gregory’s

Mathematics Statement of Intent

The intent of St Gregory’s Mathematics curriculum is to ensure that every child enjoys mathematics and becomes an enthusiastic mathematician by developing their skills, knowledge and understanding through practical experiences that have relevance and purpose in everyday situations. It is important that children develop the skills of numeracy to become lifelong learners. They should be able to apply these skills in different situations across the curriculum and in daily life outside school.

We believe that Maths is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for most forms of employment. A high-quality mathematics education therefore provides a 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. It is essential that they understand its importance in being able to function effectively in everyday life, including carrying out employment and dealing with financial matters.

We want every child to make connections across mathematical concepts in order to develop their fluency, reasoning and problem solving skills, and to be able to apply their mathematical knowledge to other curriculum areas.

We want to develop a numerate environment where mathematical risk-taking, creativity and logical thought are encouraged in order to develop independent learners. We want children, when faced with challenges, to develop resilience and perseverance.

What the Maths Pupil Voice say about Maths:

We want to enjoy Maths and to succeed at our own level. We practise our fluency facts daily and use them to solve problems, not only in maths, but in other subjects too. When faced with problems, we want to have a range of strategies that we can use to help us. We think that Maths is important and it can help us to get a job when we are older. One of our favourite online resources is Time Tables Rock Stars: we love using Times Tables Rock Stars to improve our times tables and we enjoy the competitions that are set.

Aims of Mathematics at St Gregory’s

We aim to ensure that all pupils:

develop a positive attitude towards mathematics.
develop and consolidate basic mathematical skills and become numerically fluent.
promote confidence and competence with numbers and the number system.
develop the ability to solve problems through decision making and reasoning in a range of contexts.
develop a practical understanding of the ways in which information is gathered, presented and interpreted.
explore features of shape and space, and develop measuring skills in a range of contexts.
develop mathematical communication through speaking and listening, practical activities and recording work.
develop an ability to use and apply mathematics across the curriculum and in real life

Implementation

At St Gregory’s we follow the National Curriculum. We implement our approach through high quality teaching, delivering appropriate challenges for all individuals. To support learning, a range of resources are readily available to assist demonstration of securing a conceptual understanding of the different skills appropriate for each year group. The mapping of Mathematics across school shows clear progression in line with age related expectations.

The calculation policy is used within school to ensure a consistent approach to teaching the four operations over time and to develop, and promote, mental methods. We continuously strive to better ourselves and frequently share good practice. Through our teaching, we continuously monitor pupils’ progress against expected attainment for their age, and use summative and formative assessment to inform our discussions in termly Pupil Progress Meetings. We participate in cross school moderation, which is used to ensure that the assessment judgements made for any one pupil are accurate, fair, comparable with those made for all other pupils in the same class, and consistent with those made in other classes and in other schools.

From the 2019/20 academic year onwards, schools in England are required to administer an online multiplication tables check (MTC) to year 4 pupils. The purpose of the MTC is to determine whether pupils can recall their times tables fluently, which is essential for future success in mathematics. We stress the importance of knowing multiplication tables and to support the children with their multiplication practice, we use a variety of strategies including online resources. All pupils are taught to develop efficient strategies for mental and written calculations which is clearly outlined within our school policy. Pupils should read and spell mathematical vocabulary, at a level consistent with their increasing word reading and spelling knowledge.

We believe that the Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract (CPA) approach is a highly effective approach to teaching that develops a deep and sustainable understanding of maths in pupils. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly are challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content. Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material, consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on. Children work both collaboratively and independently solving problems, which require them to persevere and develop resilience

The main purpose of all assessment is to always ensure that we are providing excellent provision for every child.

As mentioned above, we use the C.P.A approach, which gives children the opportunity to build competency.

Concrete-children should have the opportunity to use concrete objects to help them understand what they are doing.

Pictorial- alongside this children should use pictorial representations. These representations can then be used to help reason and solve problems.

Abstract- both concrete and pictorial representations should support children’s understanding of abstract methods

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 the journey to finding an answer is most important. Our children have a growth mindset and they make measurable progression against their own targets.

As a result of our Maths teaching at St Gregory’s you will see:

Engaged children who are all challenged.
Confident children who can all talk about Maths and their learning and the links between Mathematical topics.
Lessons that use a variety of resources to support learning.
Different representations of mathematical concepts.
Learning that is rigorously tracked and monitored to ensure all children make good progress.