Mathematics
Our Maths Lead is Miss Wallis
Intent
By the time our children leave St Peter’s we hope that they will have a love of mathematics. We believe the purpose of mathematics is not solely to gain classroom based skills, but to develop enquiry and reasoning skills and inquisitive minds that will develop through life. We want our children to understand, as they progress through the school, that maths is not only essential to everyday life, necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment but is also a fun and engaging experience. Our aim is to ensure that all children become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics and be able to solve problems.
So our aim is to ensure that all pupils:
Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.
Can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.
Implementation
To ensure whole consistency and progression, the school uses the White Rose scheme of work that is matched to the DFE’s National Curriculum.
Mathematics is taught 5 times a week and offers 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. Each lesson provides children with the opportunity to reason through their ideas, use their mathematical language to explore a line of enquiry to solve routine and non-routine problems.
Teaching will cater for the individual needs of the children and include some element of reasoning and problem solving. Challenging questioning is a key part of the maths lesson – allowing the children to demonstrate what they know and to extend their understanding.
At St Peter's we teach Maths through White Rose and NCTEM Mastering Number.
SEND
Developing an understanding of the basic skills in mathematics is a crucial. For children with a special need or disability, teachers will plan learning which teaches these skills at an appropriate level. Recording in maths for some children can be difficult and teachers and teaching assistants will work to support children to present their work in a way which enables them to show their learning to the optimal level. Manipulatives are used by all pupils and are chosen specifically to scaffold learning in maths and children may have access to these whenever they need them.
The Impact of our Maths teaching and learning can be seen in the work below