Maths
St Mary’s Catholic Infant and Junior Academies work together to create a caring, friendly and faith-centred community, where we seek to realise the full potential of all our family through the living love of Christ. All our work with children and their families, staff, governors, parishioners and the wider community is influenced by our core values:
Compassion, Respect and Resilience.
Across both schools, our maths curriculum places an important emphasis on mastery in mathematics, particularly real-life maths, making it as meaningful as possible for our children. We provide a high-quality education within a creative, stimulating, encouraging and mutually supportive environment where children are enabled to develop the skills that they require to become successful in maths. Mathematics, a universal language that enables understanding of the world, is an integral part of the curriculum. Attainment in the subject is also the key to opening new doors to further study and employment.
Intent
The purpose of our Arches Curriculum is to ensure that our children are successful in life and learning. The ‘Nine Arches’ Sankey Viaduct in Newton-le-Willows has been the inspiration for our curriculum. The viaduct was built by George Stephenson between 1828 and 1830 and the bridge, built to let trains cross above the Sankey Canal, has international significance as the world’s earliest major railway viaduct still in use.
Our Maths curriculum is based on the objectives from the National Curriculum, with the principle focus of ensuring pupils develop confidence and mental fluency with whole numbers, counting and place value. In Key Stage 1, pupils should develop their ability to recognise, describe, draw, compare and sort different shapes and use the related vocabulary.
From this, we teach to the Arches Principles –
Ambitious – Resilience – Christ at the Heart – Health and Wellbeing – Excellence – Success
Ambitious
Our curriculum is designed to show our children that our ambitious curriculum will offer them rewards for the future. Our Maths curriculum is designed to ensure all of our children are ambitious and challenge themselves, to improve their fluency and develop their problem-solving skills.
Resilience
With high expectations and a challenging curriculum, we support our children in developing resilience and self-motivation, to overcome barriers in their pursuit of learning and enrichment. In Maths lessons, all children are given the opportunity to meet each small step, to help them build skills and never give up, no matter the challenge.
Christ at the heart
Christ at the heart along with our Mission Statement, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” we provide a high-quality education within a creative, stimulating, encouraging and mutually supportive environment where children are enabled to develop the skills they require to become successful in maths, knowing God is with them, to celebrate their successes and support their setbacks.
Health and Wellbeing
The Mental Health and Wellbeing of our children is paramount in both schools and we seek to ensure all of our lessons have enrichment and enjoyment, allowing children to find satisfaction and fun in the challenge. In Maths, the opportunity to succeed and try, try again, is always there with support and encouragement from all staff, to use the skills the children have built in their fluency to develop their reasoning and problem solving, with concrete and pictorial resources available to scaffold.
Excellence
In all things, we strive for excellence both from and for our children, providing them with the best opportunities, with a curriculum sets high expectations for each and every child. In Maths, we aim for high levels of fluency to support our children, building skills and strategies they can use in more complex questions and problems.
Successful
We work to help our children to be successful in all areas of school life, developing children who achieve whatever they put their mind to, and developing skills to help them to continue to be successful in the future. Our Maths curriculum uses the small steps approach, to ensure children experience small wins and build on each success as they develop their strategies and reasoning.
|
Fluency, Problem Solving and Reasoning embedded in our curriculum Mastery Curriculum Concrete, Pictorial and Abstract approach embedded |
|
Every lesson has a ‘focus on feedback’ section. Children are expected to access this in daily lessons and fix any misconceptions or challenge themselves further. Small steps planned helps to build confidence and resilience Talk time is embedded to build children’s use of mathematical language High expectations in all areas of Maths |
|
As a Catholic school, our Gospel values and the teachings of Jesus Christ are at the centre of all our learning in maths. With Christ's love at the centre of all that we do, students learn core knowledge, which can be applied to solving a wide variety of practical problems. |
|
We want all our children to be confident and happy mathematicians Work is adapted to meet the needs of all learners allowing children to feel confident, building self-esteem. |
|
Knowledge is built on the key component parts of the Maths Curriculum Knowledge is progressive, sequential, and part of a schemata |
|
All our children can see themselves as successful mathematicians Effective planning allows all children to succeed in mathematics regardless of their starting point. |
.png)
Being a St Mary’s Mathematician
Mathematics at both St Mary’s Infant Academy and St Mary’s Junior Academy has its foundations set in the three strands of the Primary National Curriculum: fluency, reasoning and problem solving.
We have an emphasis on revisiting prior learning and deepening knowledge with a focus on a mastery approach to deepen understanding. Our lesson structure, our methodical curriculum planning and our teachers use of precise questions enables our children to have a firm grasp of:
- Declarative knowledge (facts and figures -I know that)
- Procedural knowledge (methods-I know how)
- Conditional knowledge (reasoning and problem solving – I know when)
- This knowledge will then lead to Conceptual Understanding (making mathematical connections – I know why…)
Within the wider curriculum, subject leaders have worked to ensure that maths links in other subjects are exploited wherever possible and there are definite links to real life maths.
Our progression documents use the White Rose Maths progression to ensure clear granular detail in terms of sequencing in maths. This is progress within a lesson and across a learning sequence.
Sequences of learning allow pupils to practice and become proficient with the facts and methods they need in order to develop their understanding to reason and to develop skills in problem-solving activities. Our maths long term plan shows progression is based on the three strands from the Primary National Curriculum: fluency, reasoning and problem solving. There is a clear emphasis on revisiting prior learning and deepening knowledge throughout the year with a focus on a mastery approach to deepen understanding. Our maths curriculum is designed to help pupils to gain increasing mathematical automaticity, build confidence in their ability. An example of our long-term plan is shown below.
It is important to note, that based on the needs of a particular cohort, the topics maybe taught in a different order than shown on this plan.
Implementation
Both our staff and children are enthusiastic about maths. Through ongoing quality CPD, we strive to ensure our teachers have expert knowledge of the maths that they teach. Our pedagogy is firmly based upon our curriculum intent of embedding concepts into long-term memory so that they are able to be recalled, to ensure substantive and disciplinary knowledge and skills can be applied fluently. Recap sessions within our 5-part lesson structure is designed to ‘interrupt the forgetting’.
Our ‘St Mary’s Quality First Teaching’ model ensures that lessons are effectively sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before and towards defined end points. Pre-assessments are planned with the lesson structure to support staff when planning for learning.
| VALUED - We value vocabulary in every subject and it underpins everything we do. |
| IDENTFIED - Mathematical vocabulary is identified by the teacher in every maths lesson and is explicitly planned for. It has also been highlighted with the Calculations Policy by the maths lead. |
| TAUGHT - Vocabulary is explicitly taught in every lesson. It is an integral part of our seven part lesson structure. Vocabulary is displayed on our workling walls. |
| APPLIED - Once vocabulary is taught, it is applied. Children apply their vocabulary in their talk tasks and by using and identifying it with their independent tasks. Mathematical vocabulary will be used in reasoning and problems solving tasks, to further embed children’s understanding and within assessment outcomes in maths. |
| LEARNED - Vocabulary is revisited and relearned. Vocabulary sticks in the children’s long-term memory. Lesson by lesson, year by year, children revisit and relearn key mathematical vocabulary. |
Through an ‘explosion of experiences’, our youngest mathematicians are exposed to the foundations of their maths learning. Carefully planned maths experiences are provided for our children. High quality lessons, stories and rhymes and continuous provision in EYFS provides the building blocks for our St Mary’s mathematicians. Maths vocabulary is planned for and staff ensure children are exposed to the correct terminology when exploring experiences that have mathematical links. Staff are role models in demonstrating mathematical vocabulary and this is further enhanced in our excellent provision. The foundations of maths learning in EYFS is linked to Year 1 and beyond.
Developing a strong grounding in number is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically. Children should be able to count confidently, develop a deep understanding of the numbers to 10, the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers. By providing frequent and varied opportunities to build and apply this understanding - such as using manipulatives, including small pebbles and tens frames for organising counting - children will develop a secure base of knowledge and vocabulary from which mastery of mathematics is built. In addition, it is important that the curriculum includes rich opportunities for children to develop their spatial reasoning skills across all areas of mathematics including shape, space and measures. It is important that children develop positive attitudes and interests in mathematics, look for patterns and relationships, spot connections, ‘have a go’, talk to adults and peers about what they notice and not be afraid to make mistakes.
Quality First Teaching
Both our staff and children are enthusiastic about maths. Through ongoing quality CPD, we strive to ensure our teachers have expert knowledge of the maths that they teach. Our pedagogy is firmly based upon our curriculum intent of embedding concepts into long-term memory so that they are able to be recalled, to ensure substantive and disciplinary knowledge and skills can be applied fluently. Recap sessions within our 5-part lesson structure is designed to ‘interrupt the forgetting’.
Our ‘St Mary’s Quality First Teaching’ model ensures that lessons are effectively sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before and towards defined end points. Pre-assessments are planned with the lesson structure to support staff when planning for learning.
We understand that we may not see the true impact of our maths curriculum on our children as our maths curriculum is just the beginning of a lifetime of learning.
Our well-constructed and well-taught maths curriculum leads to great outcomes. At St Mary’s, our philosophy is that broad and balanced leads to great outcomes and meeting end points at the end of each key stage. National assessments are useful indicators of the outcomes our children achieve.
We ensure all groups of children are given the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. We strive to ensure that our children are equipped with the skills (through a growth mindset approach) to fluently be able to retrieve key facts from their semantic memory.
The quality of our children’s work, at every stage, is of a high standard. All learning is built towards an end point and at each stage of their education, we prepare our children for the next stage.
We ensure all our children are fluent in maths to a stage appropriate level.
The impact of St Mary’s maths curriculum is measured through the following:
- Assessment
- National test data
- Pupil voice
- Progress evident in children’s books and record of experiences
- Seeking views of parents where appropriate