Maths

Intent 

Maths is the foundation for understanding the world and through the teaching of Mathematics at St. Jude’s, our intent is to ensure that our children know the purpose behind their learning and apply their knowledge to their own everyday lives. We have agreed whole school curriculum drivers which run through all our curriculum subjects. We value a maths curriculum that is creative and engaging, making use of high-quality resources to enrich our teaching and learning of maths. All children will have access to this curriculum, maximising the development of every child’s ability and academic achievement to reach their potential.

With an emphasis on vocabulary in mathematics, children use appropriate mathematical talk to communicate and engage in discussions. It is important to us to develop confident mathematicians who persevere in their learning and feel safe to take risks as they develop their ability to problem solve, reason, think logically and work systematically.

Implementation 

Here are St. Jude’s we follow the White Rose resources in order to ensure that our children have full coverage of the Maths National Curriculum, and through the teaching of it we want our children to be able to develop the necessary skills to become ‘deep thinkers’, who are able to make rich connections across the areas of maths and acquire skills that can be recalled quickly and transferred and applied in different contexts in Maths and, where possible, across the whole curriculum.

All children are catered for within the maths lessons as we ensure that the children are offered the necessary support and challenge for each individual to make progress.  Children are taught through targeted differentiated groups and mixed ability whole class lessons.  We ensure that maths is taught in creative and engaging lessons using a wide range of maths manipulatives to aid and support our children in their learning. New mathematical concepts are introduced using a ‘Concrete, Pictorial and Abstract’ approach; enabling all children to experience hands on learning and have clear models and images to aid their understanding.

ICT is used as appropriate across each year group to deliver the maths curriculum and to offer our pupils a range of exciting activities to challenge and inspire. Maths is widely promoted across the school. Our classrooms have working walls to support children’s learning and to provide extra challenge and a whole school hall display celebrates weekly achievements in mathematics.

Our aim is to ensure that the three core areas of the national curriculum are covered in all our lessons: fluency, reasoning and problem solving. We offer 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 integrated into our lessons to equip our children with the skills to describe, explain, convince, justify and prove. The emphasis we put on the using and understanding of mathematical vocabulary is key to the success of this.

We hope to build problem-solvers of the future and build perseverance in our children; essential skills used in all aspects of their learning.

At St Jude’s we offer enrichment activities to promote maths within our children’s lives including a lunch-time maths club where children access on-line resources to develop fluency in the recall of number facts. All children have access to Times Tables Rock Stars or Numbots to continue to develop their Maths skills through home learning.

Teachers have a flexible approach to the structure of their lesson so that they can reach the needs of the curriculum, however, all maths lessons must have the following key elements:

• Skills practice – revisit of previous taught content, developing fluency of number facts etc
• Vocabulary – to review and/or introduce and explain new vocabulary
• Purpose- links with real life situations/problems
• Modelling by the teacher
• Independent activity
• Plenary/Review

Impact

As a result of our Maths teaching at St. Jude’s you will see:

• children who are engaged in their learning
• children who are confident to talk about Maths and their learning, relating it to real life purposes.
• children using acquired vocabulary in lessons and discussions
• children have skills to use methods independently and show perseverance when tackling problems
• the use of different representations of mathematical concepts
• learning that is tracked and monitored to ensure all children make good progress 

At St Jude’s we assess every half term.  . At the end of each term teachers will send subject leaders the percentage of children achieving/ not achieving and this will then be shared with the curriculum link governor. 

Maths Progression

Websites to support your child with Maths at home, click on each website to explore.

Helping your child at home with Maths

Multiplication

Being fluent in calculations and knowing times tables by heart are essential in Mathematics. Children who have a strong grasp of them tend to be more confident when learning new concepts.

At school, children lots of practical resources to develop a good understanding of multiplication and division and on-line games such as Times Tables Rock Stars will help them become more fluent.

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In the Summer Term, children in Year 4 will do a Multiplication Tables Check introduced by the Government; an annual check that children have a good level of times tables knowledge.
Find out more and be ready for the Check: 

Multiplication - Information for parents  

Quick fire Times Tables practice

Topmarks Multiplication Hit the Button

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General Maths websites to support your child at home:

Numberblocks

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