Maths Curriculum Information

                                                       

Introduction

 

The intention of the Maths curriculum at Our Lady’s is that our children gain a love for maths and enjoy the wonderful opportunities they have to celebrate their mathematical knowledge and understanding. All children, from EYFS to Year 6 access levels of maths for their year group with every child taking part in mastery lessons with the intention of getting deeper into their knowledge and develop a greater understanding of mathematical concepts. This is instead of moving through each topic quickly. The whole class is taught mathematics together, with no differentiation by acceleration to new content. The learning needs of individual pupils are addressed through careful scaffolding, skilful questioning and appropriate intervention, in order to provide the necessary support and challenge.

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Within these lessons children are active learners: actively exploring maths concepts using concrete, pictorial and abstract representation and structures. This enables the children to use their maths in contextual settings and is regularly linked to the wider world. To further this, we strive to build a child’s resilience against maths problems allowing them to develop their vocabulary by reasoning in daily lessons. We have been able to approach and work with many other schools in a mastery setting which has helped us to develop the math curriculum we have in school. Our maths curriculum progresses through the knowledge and vocabulary in a coherent manner building on knowledge year on year.

 

What pupils say about Maths at Our Lady’s

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“I like maths as I like experimenting with the number and what you can find out and make with those numbers.”

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“I enjoy to solve all the calculations and I like it how teachers support you when you are struggling. I love to be challenged.” 

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“I love it when we get the blocks and base ten out to help us with our learning.”

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“We always use counters to help us with our learning and it helps me to answer some really hard questions.”

 

 

 

Number day

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In February each year, Our Lady’s celebrate Number Day. It is a day celebrated by schools across the world in support of the NSPCC.  It is a day we celebrate numbers and maths in everyday life. The children get a chance to dress up with numbers or shapes on their clothing. The day is filled with practical activities such as baking, playing board games and lots of problem solving. The children take part in a Times Tables Rock stars competition too.

 
The children always thoroughly enjoy the day and we are always proud to be raising money for the NSPCC, a fantastic cause.

 

 

Times Tables Challenge Days

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Every spring, here at Our Lady’s, we open our doors to other schools and host a Times Table Challenge morning. This is a morning where we test the knowledge of Year 2, 3 and 4 children with active problem solving. This day is specially designed for children who may struggle with their times tables. It is full of practical times table challenges to help them with their learning and to compete against children of their own age. Each morning is tailored to the year group expectations. They always have so much fun and it is a time to meet children from schools close to us.

 

 

Homework and Involvement of Parents:

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The importance of parents in supporting and encouraging mathematic learning at every stage of the curriculum. This is something we really encourage and want to support parents in helping their children’s learning. Each year we hold a Maths Parental Workshop, where parents are invited into a maths lesson. The parents take part, enabling them to understand procedures and methods that we use in school. This in turn helps when they are completing their work at home as the same language is used and new methods of learning are known by the parents.

 

 

 

The children access a range of different home learning tasks. These follow on from the children’s learning in the classroom with support of an adult or older sibling. These activities can range from often practical activities for Key Stage One children to procedure and method recall for Key Stage Two.  Accessing Maths in their home life brings Maths alive and allows the children to experience it in a different setting, away from school which allows the children to actively use their maths skills in context. This work can come in a range of different formats from worksheets to online learning platforms that link closely to our curriculum and progression of knowledge and skills. These Learning platforms are Mathletics, White Rose Maths, Times Table Rockstars or Numbots. All platforms are a fun and engaging way for children to access maths at home with chances to gain points, certificates and move up on leader boards, encouraging children to regularly access learning whilst developing their existing knowledge and skills.

 

 

Assessment

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At Our Lady’s Primary School, in line with our curriculum intent, we have developed a school tracking grid to allow us to track children’s progression. Each child had a list of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) in the front of their books to allow them to be active in their assessment process. These are used most lessons for children to see which objectives they know and what they need to learn next. Children regularly self and peer assess work in class to allow for the spotting of mistakes and for them to set themselves targets for the next lesson.  Alongside this, teacher use a traffic light system in their marking to tell children how they achieved that lesson and to inform planning for the next day’s lesson. Children also receive purple pen as feedback to their learning and are expected to respond to this.  We assess the children formatively as each topic in maths ends using the White Rose Maths end of unit assessments. This allows us to see how the children have done from one topic to the next. As summative assessment, the children complete assessments at the end of each term. Y2 and 6 are assessed using the end of key stage assessments (KS1 and KS2 SATS). EYFS and Year 1 are assessed using the Rising Stars Puma assessments. Year 3 – 5 access the NFER summative assessments. These will capture our ongoing assessments of each child showing us how well our curriculum is being implemented as well as how our children are progressing through the curriculum and the impact it has on their learning.  It will enable teachers to plan subsequent learning opportunities so that individual needs are met and children can make progress towards the end of year expectations.  Judgements relating to end of year expectations will be made at the end of the academic year.

 

SMSC in Mathematics

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Spiritual development in Mathematics
The study of mathematics enables students to make sense of the world around them and we strive to enable each of our pupils to explore the connections between their mathematics skills and every-day life. Developing deep thinking and an ability to question the way in which the world works promotes the spiritual growth of pupils. Pupils are encouraged to see the sequences, patterns, symmetry and scale both in the man-made and the natural world and to use maths as a tool to explore it more fully.

 

Moral development in Mathematics
The moral development of pupils is an important thread running through our mathematics curriculum. Pupils are provided with opportunities to use their maths skills in real life contexts, applying and exploring the skills required in solving various problems. For example, pupils are encouraged to analyse data and problem solve and reason why this data may be true or false. All pupils are made aware of the fact that the choices they make when answering a problem lead to various different answers. They must then make a choice that links to the outcome or answer they are looking for. The logical aspect of this relates strongly to the right/wrong responses in maths.

 

Social development in Mathematics
Problem solving skills and teamwork are fundamental to mathematics through creative thinking, discussion, explaining and presenting ideas. Pupils are always encouraged to explain concepts to each other and support each other in their learning. All our children sit within a mixed ability setting to encourage this. During this discussion time, pupils realise their own strengths and feel a sense of achievement which often boosts confidence. Over time they become more independent and resilient learners.

 

Cultural development in Mathematics
Mathematics is a universal language with a myriad of cultural inputs throughout the ages. Various approaches to mathematics from around the world are used and this provides an opportunity to discuss their origins. This includes different multiplication methods from Egypt, Russia and China, Pythagoras’ Theorem from Greece, algebra from the Middle East and debates as to where Trigonometry was first used. We try to develop an awareness of both the history of maths alongside the realisation that many topics we still learn today have travelled across the world and are used internationally.