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Maths at St. Joseph's - Intent, Implementation and Impact

Intent
 
 
Mathematics is essential in everyday life. We have a strong desire for all children to develop an ability to solve problems, to reason, to think logically, and to work systematically and accurately– all valuable skills that help children to make sense of the world around them. At St. Joseph's Catholic Primary school, we believe all children should enjoy their maths lessons and that all children can achieve in maths.  Offering our children a rich and progressive mathematics curriculum is at the forefront of everything we do. We use a range of learning strategies to allow all our children access and enjoy maths and support them to become confident mathematicians who are able to use high-quality mathematical dialogue in the classroom.  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. Children are guided and supported in developing number skills, graph work and skills relating to shape and measure. We want our children to see the importance and purpose mathematics has in their everyday lives.
 
Implementation
 
At St. Joseph's Catholic Primary School, maths is taught on a daily basis in mixed ability classes. We used to follow the White Rose Maths Hub scheme however, in September 2021 in line with the Trust's vision, we have adopted the use of the DFE approved scheme of Power Maths, which is closely aligned to White Rose Schemes of learning. Power Maths provides teachers with notes and guidance on how to enhance their teaching of the subject along with key vocabulary, questions and discussion, and teaching points. During this transitional stage, we ensure that our staff feels confident in being selective in the resourcing they use for a lesson or are confident to spend longer on a specific skill or concept if they feel that the children in their class would benefit from this.

The curriculum is broken down into small manageable steps in order to ensure that each lesson has a clear focus and helps children understand concepts 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. 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.

All children are included in whole class lessons and teachers provide scaffolding and relevant support as necessary. Children who do not make expected progress are identified and intervention programs are put in place to support these children. This includes same-day intervention that enables children to access the learning planned for the following lesson. Teachers use assessment for learning methods to ensure that the work set for children is matched to ability.

Weekly maths homework is set using an online platform called IXL. Homework set is an opportunity to practice concepts taught in class each week. Alongside weekly homework, children are encouraged to learn number bonds and times tables on a regular basis.
 
Power Up - Children will complete 5 power-up questions at the start of each of their maths lessons. These are a mixture of questions that allow children to quickly recap and recall information. Teachers will then use additional adults to provide intervention in areas that the children may not yet be confident in. 
 
Numbots - Primarily for Foundation, Year 1 and Year 2. This online resource provides a plethora of opportunities to practise skills in a variety of ways. As children become more confident and secure in their addition and subtraction, the questions get harder. The personalised program works to ensure that areas of weakness are covered more regularly. 
 
Times Tables Rock Stars - Primarily for those children at the end of year 2 and in year 3 and 4. This works in a similar way to Numbots, but develops fluency with multiplication and division. 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. 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.
 
IXL  - Each term Children will complete a diagnostic assessment using this online resource. The system then knows which areas your child needs to develop and provides recommended activities, together with model solutions to learn from. The more the children practise, the better the computer knows them and the more personalised the resources becomes.  
 
How can you help at home?
Ensure they complete that least an hour a week of their online resources - this will be directed by your class teacher on the class web page. 
Ask questions at the shop "Which is lower? Higher? Cheaper?" "How much would it cost for 2?"
Count in 2s,3s,4s,5s,6s etc.
Play board games

Impact

 

As we firmly believe that maths is an essential everyday life skill that they rely on in many areas of life, we want to ensure that our children understand the relevance and importance of what they are learning in relation to real world concepts. 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 and develop and present a justification, argument or proof using mathematical language.  Our children demonstrate 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.

Assessment takes place at three connected levels: short-term, medium-term and long-term. These assessments are used to inform teaching in a continuous cycle of planning, teaching and assessment.   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.  

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.