Maths at St Matthias
At St Matthias we know that by providing our children with quality maths lessons each and every day, we are equipping them with the skills that they need in order to be confident mathematicians and resilient problem solvers.
Mathematics is an essential skill, and we want our children to feel secure in their knowledge and understanding, but also to enjoy it! As teachers who are passionate about maths, we want out children to know that not only does maths take place in the classroom, but all-around us as well! For this reason, our teachers are committed to ensuring that lessons are engaging, interactive and centred around real-life contexts.
How do we team Maths?
Our teaching for mastery approach means our pupils acquire a deep, long-term, and adaptable understanding of the subject. All of our pupils work together on the same lesson content at the same time, ensuring that they master concepts before moving to the next part of the curriculum sequence. If a pupil fails to grasp a concept or procedure, this is identified quickly and early intervention ensures the pupil is ready to move forward with the whole class in the next lesson. We consider challenge for all our pupils, not just some – there are layers of challenge in the questions we provide our pupils and we promote reactive teaching rather than pre-set differentiated tasks.
We provide our pupils with opportunities for different types of challenge (problem solving, reasoning and fluency). Lesson design identifies the new mathematics that is to be taught, the key points, the difficult points and a carefully sequenced journey through the learning. In a typical lesson the teacher leads back and forth interaction, including questioning, short tasks, explanation, demonstration, and discussion. Procedural fluency and conceptual understanding are developed in tandem. Practice is a vital part of learning, but the practice used is intelligent practice that both reinforces pupils’ procedural fluency and develops their conceptual understanding. Significant time is spent developing deep knowledge of the key ideas that are needed to underpin future learning. The structure and connections within the mathematics are emphasised, so that pupils develop deep learning that can be sustained. Key facts such as multiplication tables and addition facts within 10 are learnt to automaticity to avoid cognitive overload in the working memory and enable pupils to focus on new concepts
NCETM Mastering Number
Click here to view the St Matthias Maths Curriculum Overview
The National Curriculum sets our three main areas of maths for children to master:
- Fluency
- Reasoning
- Problem Solving
Every, our pupils will be completing the National Curriculum Year 4 Multiplication test. There are 25 questions to answer, with only 6 seconds to record your answer! See how you would do here.
Teachers and support staff provide targeted support and assessment to help all children make good progress in maths. To see how you can help too, view Helping your child with maths or visit our school’s YouTube page to access clips showing different maths strategies.
We have invested in subscriptions to the only learning platforms Times Tables Rock Stars (KS2) and Numbots (EYFS/KS1&2). There are fantastic resources that can have a huge impact in improving children’s fluency in learning number facts. Each child has be given their login details for these.
