Maths

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 we teach maths

As a school, we believe that all children can be successful mathematics and it is our duty to ensure that we provide support to scaffold our children’s learning and challenge them to deep their understanding. St Matthias follow a mastery approach to teaching maths, which means that we help pupils build a secure and solid foundation of knowledge and understanding, before we provide them with opportunities to apply the skills that they have learnt in a range of different contexts in order to deepen and master.

One way in which children are supported to master the maths curriculum is by using the CPA approach. The Primary Advantage Maths programme that our school uses promotes the importance of children being about to use concreate resources, before pictorial representations are created; and finally abstract records of work is made. Resources that our pupils use include equipment such as: numicon, diennes, place value counters, number strings and number lines. Having opportunities to learn and work collaboratively is incredibly important to us, and so rich talk partners, shared investigating and mixed ability groups allow our children to learn side by side as class.

The National Curriculum sets our three main areas of maths for children to master:

1. Fluency
2. Reasoning
3. Problem Solving

Fluency

Fluency refers to knowing key number facts and methods and being about to recall these efficiently. Whilst in Year 1 this may be to recall all of the number bonds to 10 at speed, in Year 4 a child needs to be able answer all multiplication facts up to 12×12. It is common belief that showing fluency in number is about being able to say times tables in correctly in order quickly. In order to show fluency, children actually have to be confident in recalling number facts in a random order and know the appropriate division fact too!

Every Thursday, Times Tables Club is held, where children can test and challenge themselves on their number facts! As a school, we have also subscribed to Timestables Rock Stars which allows the children to compete, battling against one another to improve their accuracy and speed in answering questions – our children thoroughly enjoy it! Pupils have their login details recorded in their homework books and the link to the website can be found here.

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.

Reasoning

Alongside learning key number facts, children learn to reason about their maths. This involves partner talk and having to justify answers using mathematical vocabulary. Being able to say why an answer or method is correct or incorrect shows mastery of an area of maths. Reasoning also involves pattern spotting and looking for rules and connections. By developing these skills of reasoning, our children are truly about to deepen their understanding of the different areas of mathematics. We use a range of documents to support our teaching of reasoning skills, these include:

• The White Rose Maths
• The NCETM: Teaching for Mastery and Mastery at Greater Depth
• I See Reasoning by Gareth Metcalfe

Problem Solving

Problem solving is a thread that is woven through all elements of maths. Some may argue that this is the area of mathematics that our teachers and children take the most amount of pleasure in developing! As problem solvers children learn to think creatively and develop flexibility in their thinking. Children have to draw upon all of the knowledge and skills that they have learnt in order to decide how they are going to answer a question as problems are often challenging. At the end of a lesson there could well be 30 different ways that a problem has been solved and this is something that we really celebrate.

Key resources that our school use to plan for problem solving include:

• NRICH
• I See Problem Solving by Gareth Metcalfe

Assessment for Learning

Ongoing assessment takes place in our children’s classrooms every day through questioning, on the spot feedback, discussions, as well as work recorded in books. Our teachers are responsive to children’s understanding in their long-term and short-term planning and carefully consider how each child can be supported to mastery the curriculum. ‘Beat its’ are used weekly to assess children’s fluency, whilst ‘Prove its’ are used to revisit previous topics to ensure that the learning has ‘stuck’. Half termly assessment are routine across the school and are used to inform how each children can be supported to achieve their fully potential in maths.

Teaching children how to take ownership of their learning and encouraging them to see themselves as drivers of their own progress and success is key to us at St Matthias. By developing our children’s skills in metacognition they can reflect on what they have made progress in and identify next steps. In maths peer and self-assessment is done on a regular basis and explicit modelling and sentence starters are used to scaffold this ‘high impact’ form of assessment.

Coming Soon!

• Booklet on how to support your child in maths at home.
• Dates for parent/carer maths workshops
• Recommended Maths apps
• Examples of work in maths at St Matthias
• Research to support maths learning

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.

Click here to find out more about Primary Advantage maths.