Maths
Intent
At St Wilfrid’s, our broad and balanced curriculum is ambitious and carefully designed to give all pupils, with a particular emphasis on those who are disadvantaged or with SEND, the knowledge and skills that they need to take advantage of opportunities, responsibilities and experiences in later life. It is deliberately planned and sequenced so that the end points that it is building towards are clear and that pupils develop knowledge and skills, directly linking to what has been taught before (through 'Flashback 4s’), to be able to reach those end points. The end points are evidenced through carefully tracked outcomes and assessments, including NTS and DfE mathematics assessments at key points in the year. Pupils learn the knowledge that they need to answer subject-specific questions and are able to practically demonstrate and apply the cyclical skills that they acquire, supported by meaningful links between subjects. Pupils make good progress due to the expert knowledge of subject leaders and teachers, ensuring pupils know and remember more.
We strive for a maths curriculum that is creative, engaging and relevant. All children have access to a rich curriculum that they enjoy, and are able to make progress. Our children need to develop the necessary maths fluency skills and in turn utilise those skills and apply them to wider problems. They need to be able to make rich connections across the areas of maths and use their knowledge in other subjects. Maths is the foundation for understanding the world and we want our children to know the purpose behind their learning and to apply their knowledge to their everyday lives.
Implementation
Maths coverage follows the national curriculum and we employ a 'teaching in thirds' approach. We have a curriculum that aims to teach fluency, problem solving and reasoning in equal measure, thus ensuring that children can apply their knowledge and skill with increasing accuracy and speed. Following a clear overview ensures that our children cover each area of the curriculum thoroughly, aiming for a mastery approach, whilst also revisiting topics several times over the year, and again in consecutive years, allowing their knowledge to be reinforced and embedded. The variety of resources used to supplement this curriculum and promote mastery of maths include Nrich, White Rose and NCTEM. 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. 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 to support the delivery of 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. Maths is widely promoted across the school and our classrooms have working walls and resources that the children can utilise to support their learning and provide extra challenge.
Our aim is to ensure that the three core areas of the national curriculum are covered in all of our lessons: fluency, reasoning and problem solving. ICT programmes such as TT Rockstars are used to improve fluency of times tables. 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.
At St Wilfrid’s we are committed to building a strong subject knowledge for staff who undertake professional development courses and will be further able to deliver engaging and creative education.
In order to ensure children progress teachers:
- ‘Know where their children are’ through the use of concise summative assessment, prior learning, gap analysis and general class assessment.
- ‘Understand where their children need to be’ through a secure understanding of year group expectations and/or pre key stage expectations and incisive, ongoing, formative assessment
- ‘Know how they are going to get them there’ through the use of a range of strategies to promote independence, mastery and high expectations.
- Effectively deploy adults, specifically during introductions, plenaries & catch-up sessions 5. Plan for progression during and between lessons.
These are all discussed at regular pupil progress meetings.
This is how maths is implemented at St Wilfrid’s in order to encourage problem-solvers of the future and build a love of learning and resilience in our children by providing them with essential skills they can use in all aspects of their learning.
Additional Learning and Information
How can you support learning at home?
For younger children, it is extremely valuable to count with your child. Things like singing songs, number hunting when out and about, counting shopping items, counting money etc gives them a good start in maths.
As they get older you can help them by getting them to tell the time, involving them in shopping and helping them practise their times tables.
The times tables are vitally important and children benefit massively by being able to recall all of the times tables facts up to 12 x12 – including the division facts.
i.e 4 x 5 = 20 so 20 ÷ 5 = 4
Children should know all of these by year 4 and the government are introducing a national on-line test for all 8 and 9 year old pupils.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/multiplication-tables-check-trials-to-begin-in-schools
There are a number of websites that can be very beneficial to your child and help them with their maths skills.
Log on to TT Rockstars to practise times tables
https://play.ttrockstars.com/auth/school/student
Topmarks is a great site for a variety of games for all ages
Oxford Owl has some good games and activities
https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/welcome-back/for-home/reading-owl/maths
Maths is fun explains maths in easy to understand language. Plus puzzles, games, worksheets and an illustrated dictionary. It is invaluable for children, parents –and even teachers!
