Intent
At St Wilfrid’s Catholic Primary School we recognise the importance of mathematics throughout each child’s every day and future life. We believe all children can achieve well in maths enabling them to become confident, competent and independent mathematicians. Offering our children, a rich and progressive mathematics curriculum is at the forefront of everything we do. We aim to develop children’s conceptual understanding of maths and it’s interrelated relationships and patterns across both number and space in the world around them. We want our children to see mathematics as an essential skill in everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. We to give each child the self-confidence and resilience to reach their full potential by ensuring that they have the proficiency and tools to become inquisitive learners who can calculate fluently, reason logically, problem solve and think in abstract ways both orally and in writing.
We use a range of learning strategies to allow all children to access and enjoy maths and support them to become confident mathematicians who are able to use high-quality mathematical dialogue in the classroom showcasing the ability to articulate, discuss and explain their thinking using appropriate mathematical vocabulary. Throughout the school, we use our mastery curriculum to develop fluency and deepen thinking; moving through different representations of mathematical ideas so that our children see mathematics as an interconnected subject.
Implementation
Our curriculum follows the ‘Power Maths White Rose Edition’ scheme of work, in which the curriculum is broken down into small manageable steps in order to ensure that each lesson has a clear focus and helps children understand each concept by following a carefully planned sequence of lessons. This avoids the cognitive overload that can occur when too many concepts are covered at once and ensures that each lesson contributes to the long-term goal. Within each lesson, children have the opportunity to acquire, practice, apply and deepen their knowledge and skills as appropriate beginning with talk and discussion, then progressing to formal recording. Pupils who understand concepts quickly are challenged by being offered rich and sophisticated problems to deepen their understanding. Concepts are revisited over time so that children can reinforce them and embed them into their long-term memory.
When introduced to a new concept, children have the opportunity to follow the concrete – pictorial - abstract approach. Concrete objects and manipulatives help them understand what they are doing. Alongside these, children use pictorial representations that can be used to help reason and solve problems. Concrete and pictorial representations then help support children’s understanding of abstract methods. During maths lessons, children will also have the opportunity to develop their reasoning skills, orally and written. When reasoning, children are encouraged to support their reasoning with mathematical proof to underpin answers. Positive learning characteristics are promoted through the Power Maths characters Determined (Dexter), Brave (Astrid), Curious (Ash) and Flexible (Flo).
All children are included in whole class lessons with teachers providing scaffolding and relevant support as necessary, recognising that all children are capable of achieving. Adaption of the scheme is seen through the use of concrete resources and/ or the reliance on representations and structures within maths lessons to help embed a mathematical concept. Whilst we recognise that the vast majority of children progress through the curriculum content at the same pace, regular and ongoing formative assessments inform teaching, interventions and support. All children are expected to be exposed to age related expectations and staff provide intervention to plug gaps children may have in a particular area of mathematics. Staff understand what age-related expectations and mastery looks like for each objective and plan for how their children will get there. In order to meet the needs of all pupils, children working at a greater depth of understanding within an area of mathematics have challenge opportunities planned by staff.
Each unit begins with a unit starter, which introduce the learning context along with key mathematical vocabulary, structures and representations, this is shared with the children to check readiness and equip them for the learning ahead.
Maths lessons occur daily, each lesson is scaffolded with Textbook and practice Book activities. Power Maths is a unique lesson sequence at St Wilfrid’s we follow this structure:
End of unit checks are completed following the next unit as this allows teachers to identify fluency, recall and retention, with intervention and support being provided as needed on a timely basis to ensure firm foundation are built.
Weekly maths homework is set for year 3 -5 on Times Tables Rock Stars to improve quick recall and develop fluency in multiplication and division, consolidating the access children have to this in school. Children will start with 2,5,10 times table and associated facts. as they move up through the year groups they will learn new times tables inline with the relevant curriculum.. At the end of year 4 they will complete a National Standardised Assessment. It is expected that children will know and be able to use all their times tables and associated facts by the end of year 4. Children in year 6 will be set maths homework using the CGP books to consolidate learning.
Impact
Our children will understand the relevance and importance of what they are learning across mathematics in relation to real world concepts, understanding it is an essential everyday life skill that they will rely on throughout life. We aim for our children to be fluent in mathematics with a sound conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. Our children should have the skills to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of situations with increasing sophistication, including in unfamiliar contexts and to model real-life scenarios. Children will be able to reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, develop and present a justification, argument or proof using mathematical language. Across the school, there will be a positive view of maths due to learning in an environment where maths is promoted as being an exciting and enjoyable subject in which they can investigate and ask questions; they know that it is OK to be ‘wrong’ and that this can strengthen their learning because the journey to finding an answer is most important. Children are confident 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.
Teachers will assess children’s understanding, achievement and progress in mathematics using daily assessments, these are based on observations, questioning, quizzes and the marking and evaluation of work completed within the Power Maths workbook. Summative assessments will be used after the following unit alongside termly assessments to monitor children’s progress and used to support planned interventions.
At the end of Key stage 2, it is our aim that our children reach or exceed age related expectations in mathematics, in line with national outcomes. The subject leader will closely monitor the impact of teaching and learning, ensuring consistency in teaching approaches through lesson observations, book looks, pupil interviews and analysing progress and attainment data.