Maths

How we teach Maths at St. Edward’s Catholic Primary School

Coverage of the Numeracy Curriculum is robust across all key stages and teachers use the White Rose Maths Scheme of Learning to support teaching for mastery. The approach offers clear progression throughout school and is consistent in the layout and structure of each lesson to allow for children to easily begin learning. This offers challenge to all pupils and a wide variety of resources are used to engage the children.

Mastery means having a secure understanding of mathematical concepts and processes, combined with a genuine procedural fluency. A child who has mastered a particular skill is able to apply their understanding and solve different types of problems, including where the skill is either embedded in a different context, or where a choice of method has to be made. For example, a child who has mastered adding two 2-digit numbers should be able to identify where this is required, even when it is not presented in a straightforward way (e.g. ⃝ – 23 = 39) and also choose an efficient strategy for doing it (e.g. 40 + 22).

Some children will be able to achieve mastery with greater depth. This means that they are able to apply their understanding of a concept in a wider variety of contexts, some of which are more difficult. They can manipulate the facts they know and the skills they possess in order to solve more complex problems. More developed forms of mathematical reasoning are central to this process, and enable the recognition of a link between operations and processes. For example, a child who has mastered the addition of 2-digit numbers in greater depth will be able to explain why it is possible to add two numbers both with units digits greater than 5 and get answers with units digits less than 5 (e.g. 16 + 7 = 23). They may also understand why adding a number to its matching reverse (46 and 64) will always give a multiple of eleven.

Maths is taught daily. The main maths lesson lasts approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour. The lesson structure begins with a short task to retrieve prior knowledge, usually in the format of a question recalling learning from last lesson, last week, last unit and last term/year. This provides regular recall practice to build fluency.

The small step for the lesson is then shared with the children and they revisit key concepts from previous learning that support the key learning of the lesson. Children then solve contextual problems as a class, with the teacher that exposes the structure of the mathematical concept. In this part of the lesson, teachers use careful questions to draw out children’s discussions and their reasoning and the children learn from misconceptions through whole class reasoning and talk. To support this, the teacher will often use a stem sentence to scaffold children’s articulation of mathematical ideas and reasoning, and/or a generalisation that supports application of the concept.

The children then work independently to apply their knowledge through a variety of fluency tasks progressing to reasoning and problem solving. This gives pupils the opportunity to make useful connections between identified mathematical ideas or to anticipate practical problems they are likely to encounter in adult life.

In EYFS and Key Stage 1, teachers follow the Mastering Number approach to embed key number concepts and facts to aid quick retrieval of information. In Key Stage 2, teachers teach children specific number facts from our “Fluency of Facts” list.

End of unit tests are used to help assess whether children are secure at the end of a topic and help identify gaps which can be addressed before moving on.

Times Table Rock Stars has been made available to support and engage children with the recall of times table facts, this is timetabled regularly for each year group.

White Rose Maths: National Curriculum Progression

Apps which you can use at home

At St. Edwards, we encourage the children to develop their learning outside of school. There are two apps which school recommends to support children’s mathematical understanding: Numbots and Times Tables Rockstars. Your child should have their own personalised login details. If your child has lost their username or password, please speak to your child’s class teacher. The app is available for both iOS and Android devices or can be accessed on any modern browser by clicking on any of the links below.

NumBots is all about every child achieving the “triple win” of understanding, recall and fluency in mental addition and subtraction, so that they move from counting to calculating.

Younger players will be able to access the early stages from a mathematical point of view but will find it increasingly harder to reach the level of fluency required to make continued progress.

Times Tables Rock Stars is a carefully sequenced programme of daily times tables practice aimed at children in Year 2 upwards.

The children are encouraged to learn their times tables and to recall linked facts quickly. This will help the children to further develop their mathematical understanding further up the school.