Maths

What does this look like in Mathematics?

At Our Lady and St Teresa’s Catholic Primary School, we equip our children with the skills and talents to become lifelong learners; we offer a curriculum that is aspirational, achievement driven and inclusive for all learners. This is achieved through the fulfilment of statutory requirements coupled with rich and purposeful learning opportunities.

Mathematics is an important, creative discipline that helps us to understand and be a part of our world. At Our Lady and St Teresa’s, we want all pupils to experience the power and enjoyment of Mathematics and develop a sense of curiosity about the subject; making links between different contexts.
At Our Lady and St Teresa’s, we foster a learning environment that does not limit our children, believing all children can achieve in Mathematics, and we work alongside our children to secure deep understanding of mathematical concepts. We use mistakes and misconceptions as an essential part of learning and provide challenge through rich and sophisticated problems.

Curriculum Intent:

Through our broad and balanced curriculum planning, Mathematicians at Our Lady and St Teresa’s engage with a variation of opportunities, in every lesson, through the Teaching for Mastery Approach.

We aim for all pupils to:

• Become fluent with the fundamentals of Mathematics (see Curriculum Maps) so that they develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall knowledge rapidly; showing an appreciation for number and operations which enable calculations and to be performed efficiently and accurately.
• Develop a mathematical mindset; reasoning by following a line of enquiry and presenting a justification or argument using subject-specific Mathematical vocabulary.
• Solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of contexts.
• Explore methods for solving increasingly-challenging problems which require resilience and encourage them to persevere.

Curriculum Implementation:

Each lesson focusses on a manageable step of new learning, based on the National Curriculum. At Our Lady and St Teresa’s Catholic Primary School, we follow the WhiteRose Maths curriculum.

What a typical lesson looks like:

• Flashback: an opportunity for pupils to retrieve and build upon previously acquired skills, through a: 'Last Lesson, Last Unit, Last Year, Challenge’ approach.
• Teach It: introduction to new learning with live modelling and explicit addressing of potential misconceptions. All children participate through active learning strategies.
• Practice: efficient, accurate recall of facts and procedures; requiring pupils to flexibly move between different contexts and representations. Variation in the practice provides purposeful changes by varying some elements of the skill whilst keeping others constant.
• Reasoning: providing learners with opportunities to reason and apply mathematical vocabulary by following a line of enquiry. Pupils are encouraged to justify and convince through their reasoning.
• Problem Solving: learners are required to make choices, interpret, formulate, model and investigate problem situations; communicating solutions effectively and efficiently.
• Challenge: pupils explore methods for solving increasingly challenging problems which require resilience and encourage them to persevere.

To ensure all children are appropriately challenged, an episodic teaching approach and adaptive teaching strategies are implemented. This ensures pupils move through the lesson at a pace and stage which is appropriate for their attainment within each lesson.

Practical Maths apparatus are used in every classroom to provide pupils with a variation of concrete resources which they can use to demonstrate their thinking through the concrete, pictorial, abstract (CPA) approach. These will be deployed accordingly and can be used within all parts of the lesson structure, as detailed above.

Assessment
The termly data drop on Bromcom is informed by the three assessment procedures below:

• On going formative assessment, within every lesson, through the episodic teaching approach.

• End of unit White Rose assessments.

Curriculum Impact:

There is a clearly structured learning approach; supported further by the children using a variety of concrete, pictorial, abstract (CPA) techniques to show thinking and problem solving. This is further underpinned by the accurate use of mathematical vocabulary which ensures all mathematicians at Our Lady and St Teresa’s can articulate and explain their thinking in detail.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Review

Our Lady and St Teresa’s implement a systematic approach to Monitoring, Evaluation and Review in Maths which comprises of the following:

• Learning walks and formal lesson observations
• Book trawls
• Pupil interviews
• Data analysis and pupil progress meeting