St. Mary's C.E. Primary School, Washington

Intent

At St Mary’s we acknowledge that Maths is a skill that is key to everyday life, therefore mathematics at our school forms an essential part of our curriculum. We strive to develop confident, agile mathematicians by ensuring that lessons are underpinned with enjoyment and an enthusiasm for maths, which will equip pupils with the best attitude towards Maths and learning the key knowledge and skills that will help them throughout their lives.

Carefully crafted teaching of mathematical knowledge, through small interrelated steps, ensures secure understanding of mathematical structures, which allows deep connections to be made. We believe that immersing the children in rich mathematical language as we strive for strong mathematical number fluency is the foundation for building learners who can reason and solve problems mathematically. We would like every child to develop a love of maths by feeling secure in those first building blocks, number bonds, addition and subtraction facts and moving on to times table facts.  We ensure children practice their fluency and recall of facts both at home and at school on a regular basis.

Implementation

At St. Mary’s, the principles of Teaching for Mastery are used consistently throughout the school. A whole-class teaching approach is used, keeping the class working together to secure conceptual understanding by all. This is to avoid superficial, surface learning and foster a deep, secure understanding of all the concepts taught.

The learning needs of every child are addressed through skilful questioning and appropriate, immediate intervention – this provides the necessary scaffolding to enable or the challenge to extend them all. Opportunities are provided for children to deepen their understanding of a concept through the use of extra challenges and we place high importance on mathematical talk. As a result, lessons include regular opportunities for the children to discuss their understanding and explain their thinking, both with the adults and their peers. Accurate use of vocabulary and terminology features prominently in our lessons, with teachers both modelling and expecting it from the children. We believe this will support our children when faced with a range of mathematical problems. Maths lessons really make a difference when pupils are given opportunities to think for themselves, explain their reasoning and apply what they know.

In the Early Years, firm foundations are built as children work towards the Early Learning Goals for Number and Number patterns. The mastery approach to teaching through the NCETM National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Maths, is adopted in Early Years, building the principles into the unique pedagogy for the EYFS. In the early years, prioritising the development of a strong grounding in number is essential. Maths is largely practical with concrete activities using apparatus and pictorial examples as concepts are grasped. As children develop their fine motor skills they begin forming numerals and as they reach towards achieving their learning goals, they move towards recording number sentences to show their addition and subtraction calculations. Learning through play is paramount as children develop the necessary building blocks to become confident mathematicians. The children engage in songs, rhymes, games and practical activities aimed at gradually embedding number fluency and recognition of number patterns.

Across the school we create lessons that are designed to interest, inform and inspire our children, focusing on the key skills of fluency, reasoning and problem-solving. We follow our STARs calculation policy, which outlines the mental and written methods for each of the four operations. Our focus on Concrete, Pictorial, and Abstract learning (CPA) is an essential part of the mastery approach. This method is used widely across the school, as a fundamental teaching and learning tool, which helps to scaffold and strengthen the children’s understanding of key concepts. 

Mathematical vocabulary, is clearly defined and examples explained in lessons, then added to our working walls for ongoing reference. Teachers will share key vocabulary, key questions and stem sentences to support children to discuss mathematical concepts articulately.  We encourage all children to refer back to this and communicate their ideas using the correct mathematical language, modelling back correctly any incorrect use or pronunciation.

A wide range of assessment information is collated and tracked by staff to enable diagnosis of learning gaps, celebrate success and secure excellent progress to be made by all children. At the end of each unit the children are presented with an assessment task to allow them to retrieve knowledge from the completed unit, which inform our ongoing teacher assessments.

At St Mary’s we are committed to ensuring pupils secure their knowledge of times table facts. From Year 2-6, children enthusiastically engage in regular rapid recall of their times tables using TT Rock Stars. Also in KS2, children reinforce this fluent recall by completing speed tables weekly.  In Key Stage 1, children keenly engage in regular use of White Rose Maths: 1-Minute Maths to practise recall of number facts and secure their subitising skills and number fluency for all 4 operations.

Impact

Children at St Mary’s will know about different ways in which maths can be used to support them in becoming ambitious mathematicians. Our children will know how and why maths is used in the outside world and the different ways that maths can be used to positively support their journey through life. They will master mathematical concepts and skills, be fluent in number, use mathematical language to explain their ideas and independently apply prior learning to solve new problems in unfamiliar situations. They will have adopted a resilient “give-it a go” attitude towards mathematics and developed the drive to stick with it when learning gets tricky. They will be fluent mathematicians, able to manipulate numbers in order to solve problems and understand a wide range of mathematical representations which they use to support problem solving. They will be able to reason through describing, explaining, convincing, justifying and generalising mathematical ideas.