St Paul's Catholic Primary School

KS2 Maths Ambassadors were appointed in February 2022. These children will be at the forefront of promoting Maths throughout the school. This team of children will work alongside Mrs Cook to undertake some of the following responsibilities;

 Run and manage whole school maths competitions.

• Promote a love of maths at St Paul's
• Support children mathematical recall facts 
• Facilitate lunch time maths activities.
• Help to upkeep the new Maths display and create and change the 'Problem of the week'
• Write news snippets which can be added to the parents newsletter or add helpful resources to the school website
• Take visitors and school Governors on Maths themed Learning Walks.

The Maths Ambassador Team meet regularly to discuss various items. An agenda is agreed with the children prior to the meeting and then minutes are taken. 

At St Paul’s Catholic Primary School we want our children to progress through a curriculum that is accessible to all and will maximise the development of every child’s ability and academic achievement. Our expectation is that the majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace. However, decisions about when to progress should always be based on the security of pupils’ understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly should be challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems. Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material should consolidate their understanding through additional practice. We intend for our pupils to have a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject and experience meaningful praise and effective support throughout their time at St Paul’s.

In Maths lessons at St Paul's you will see: 

• Whole class teaching with appropriate scaffolding modelled and used where needed
• Precise and accurate use of mathematical language by the teacher and the pupils
• Pupils speaking in full sentences
• Lots of discussion by the children
• Common misconceptions being addressed using feed-forward marking 
• Use of the CPA model (the CPA approach – Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract)

The national curriculum for Mathematics aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
• reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language
• can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.

At St Paul's, we believe that it is important to ensure that all children in EYFS develop firm mathematical foundations in a way that is engaging, and appropriate for their age. In Nursery and Reception children learn about Maths through play and their daily experiences – the more meaningful to them and hands on it is, the better! Across the EYFS, the children have the opportunity to start developing their early Maths learning which will underpin everything they will encounter as they progress in their Maths learning in Primary school: Cardinality and Counting; Comparison; Composition; Pattern; Shape and Space; Measures.

In KS1 and KS2, we follow the HfL Essential Maths planning. The sequences are written as a spiral curriculum in which learning is built upon step by step, sequence by sequence and year on year. It is aspirational and ensures progression and coverage through the primary phase.

At St Paul's, children are taught as a whole class with scaffolding implicit throughout. In our classrooms, you will see scaffolded modelled examples, manipulatives to support understanding across all year groups, pictorial representations, small step progression and highlighted opportunities for pupils to explore concepts at greater depth.

Pupils in all year groups record their mathematical jottings in their Maths books, providing them with many opportunities for practise and consolidation.  This provides children with a log that they can look back on to see how learning has progressed and developed within sequences and over time.

Scaffolding in Maths lessons is provided through questioning, speaking frames, highlighting and modelling key learning points and the use of manipulatives. At St Paul's we are beginning to implement the use of hinge questioning to support teachers in knowing when and how to move their children on in their learning. 

Where particular pupils have SEND and are unable to access the age related expectations, a more tailored curriculum will be provided. For individual pupils working well below the level expected, teaching sequences from previous year groups can be used to help to track forwards from the skills pupils have. This ensures the pupils build upon solid foundations, rather than adapting the age related expectations in a way that might create gaps or build an insecure surface-level understanding.

Teachers use questioning and observations during the lesson to assess understanding and this informs subsequent lessons. The destination questions will help to provide evidence that pupils have secured the related learning. As these often require some element of application or reasoning, this will indicate that the learning is deeper.

The Maths Coordinator will conduct learning walks, book reviews and pupil voice to ensure the overview of coverage and to ascertain pupils’ views of Maths. This monitoring allows triangulation of consistency, pitch and progress across the school.   

Please find below our calculation policy that will detail the different methods that teachers will model in their year group. 

You will also find a copy of our 'Wow Moments Calendar' which will detail the exciting events that will take place across a school year to help promote the love of maths. These events are designed to engage everybody and support the importance of maths in real life.

A fun and informative website for learning maths facts - https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/multiplication-and-division

Free workbooks for your children to complete at home - https://whiterosemaths.com/parent-resources