Maths
Mathematics is an important creative and highly inter-connected discipline that helps us to understand and change the world. We want all pupils at St Louis Catholic Primary School to experience the beauty and power of mathematics to develop ‘love’ for the subject. We foster a safe and supportive environment to allow children to ‘wonder’ about the power and inter-connected principles of mathematics while ‘achieving’ their individual potential. We believe all children can achieve in mathematics, and teach for secure and deep understanding of mathematical concepts through manageable steps.
At St Louis Catholic Primary School, we foster positive and resilient attitudes where we can work together learn from both mistakes and successes through the provision of challenge through rich and sophisticated problems.
We aim for all pupils to:
- have a sound understanding of number and number operations, which enables mental calculations and written procedures to be performed efficiently, fluently and accurately.
- use this understanding confidently to develop the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
- develop conceptual understanding and become competent and fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics
- reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry to develop and present a justification, argument or proof using rich and accurate mathematical language.
- be able to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of problems with increasing complexity, including in unfamiliar contexts and to model real-life scenarios
The 2014 National Curriculum for Maths aims to ensure that all children:
- become fluent in the fundamentals of Mathematics
- are able to reason mathematically
- can solve problems by applying their Mathematics
At St Louis, these skills are embedded within Maths lessons and developed consistently over time. We want all children to enjoy Mathematics and to experience success in the subject, with the ability to reason mathematically. We are committed to developing children’s curiosity about the subject, as well as an appreciation of the beauty and power of Mathematics.
Our curriculum is a progressive curriculum, allowing the learning to be broken into small manageable steps with each step building on the previous. Mathematical knowledge is constantly rehearsed and revisited so that children become fluent in their application.
Children will work collaboratively and with practical manipulatives to investigate a range of strategies that could be used to help solve the problem using our prior learning. Useful and successful strategies will then be shared with one another as well as those that were unsuccessful as they too provide learning opportunities. This knowledge of both successful and unsuccessful strategies is carried forward into the rest of the lesson to ‘do’ the maths as varied fluency questions are completed to consolidate learning. Thinking and understanding will be moved on by ‘twisting’ the maths to solve problems presented in a variety of ways e.g. spotting the mistake and correcting the misconception or solving APE (Answer, Prove and Explain) questions. Further challenge may be provided to really ‘deepen’ knowledge and understanding with problems such as ‘always, sometime or never?’ statements which require logical and critical thinking skills in relation to the lesson’s objective.
More details on our Maths Curriculum (Please click the links below to access the documents)
