Maths

INTENT

At St James’, our intent for maths is to teach a rich, balanced and progressive curriculum, which caters for the needs of all individuals, allowing opportunities to reason, problem solve and develop fluent conceptual understanding.

We aim to incorporate sustained levels of challenge through varied and high quality activities using the CPA (concrete, pictorial, abstract) approach, enabling pupils to explore maths in depth, using mathematical vocabulary to reason and explain answers.

We encourage children to use a wide range of concrete resources to show their workings, before establishing ways of pictorially and formally representing their understanding.

We encourage each domain to begin with a problem in context, which the children can apply learning to, before teaching the sufficient skills in order to find a solution.  Children are encouraged to discuss and debate during lessons, and show thinking through a range of reasoning and visual representations.  We endeavour to make connections across mathematical ideas which are important for children to show competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems.

Throughout their mathematical journeys, children are encouraged to build and develop resilience and show perseverance when problem solving and justify ideas and explaining choice of methods used.

IMPLEMENTATION

We implement our approach of mathematics through first quality teaching with clearly differentiated work to meet the needs of each individual child.  We have a clear progression of skills for calculation across the school which fall in line with age-related expectations for each year group.  Alongside this, an overview of the long term planning of the school and medium term plans further direct what is taught in conjunction with the National Curriculum. 

A range of resources, such as I see reasoning, White Rose Maths Hub, Dip & Pick cards and Classroom Secrets activities,  help teachers plan creative, enjoyable and challenging lessons.

Mathematics at St James’ is enhanced by our individual class working walls designed to aid children through each journey as well as times tables rockstars online to develop fluency in times tables.

The maths leader attends maths manager’s meetings to network with other members of staff from other schools, to share ideas and discuss ways in which maths can be continuously driven forward at St James’.

Children are encouraged to take responsibility in classes and we offer ‘choice of task’ where children can assess understanding by themselves.  This allows children to make progress during lessons and recognise that they may need some further support.  Children articulate steps to success through the use of ‘chilli challenge’ in relation to success criteria.

Through our teaching, we continuously monitor pupils’ progress against expected progress for their age, making formative assessment notes where appropriate and using these to inform discussions in termly pupil progress meetings and update summative assessment on Target Tracker.  The main purpose of all assessments is to always ensure we are providing excellent provision for each child.

IMPACT

As a result of our maths teaching at St James, you will see children who are engaged with their learning and are challenged appropriately.  They are confident talking about their maths journeys and can articulate the tasks they are working on using their ‘chilli challenge’ success criteria.

 Lessons use a variety of resources to support learning along with a range of different representations of mathematical concepts to ensure what is taught goes into the children’s long term memory. 

Learning is tracked on a daily basis and support and extension is provided through the close monitoring of the children’s work from lesson to lesson.  Children are encouraged to provide their reasoning when solving problems and enjoy the opportunity to take part in investigative work to help develop mathematical vocabulary alongside developing speech and language skills.

The children at St James show a high level of pride in the presentation and understanding of their work.

Please click on the links below to view our long and medium term overviews for each year group.