Maths

Maths at St. Teresa’s

At St. Teresa’s Primary School, the Catholic faith underpins every aspect of the curriculum and is at the centre of our learning. Children are actively encouraged to build ‘Build God’s Kingdom’.

In our school; we are resilient, we try our hardest, we don’t give up, we make mistakes and we learn from them and we are always positive and smiley. In maths we aim for our children to be all of those things.

At St. Teresa’s we provide a rich mathematics curriculum which develops and embeds fluency skills, the building blocks of maths, and we use these to become confident problem solvers who reason and explain. Our curriculum allows all learners to develop the skills needed to face maths in the real world and allows all children to progress and achieve.

In the EYFS we develop number confidence and the ‘ness’ of numbers 1 to 20 i.e. the fourness of four, which is the basic building block of maths and allows the children to progress into and through Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 as confident mathematicians. We follow the White Rose maths scheme, which we supplement and develop to suit each class and child.

The national curriculum for mathematics aims to ensure that all pupils:

  • become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately
  • reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language
  • can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions

Mathematics is an interconnected subject in which pupils need to be able to move fluently between representations of mathematical ideas. The programmes of study are, by necessity, organised into apparently distinct domains, but pupils should make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems. They should also apply their mathematical knowledge to science and other subjects.

We follow the White Rose scheme of learning, but we have adapted this to suit our own needs. Children in Years 1 to 6 have a mathematics lesson each day and a discreet arithmetic lesson which helps to build number confidence and fact recall and application. The expectation is that the majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace. However, decisions about when to progress should always be based on the security of pupils’ understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage. Teaching follows a cyclical approach, starting with exploration of the concept, onto core fluency then onto reasoning and problem solving. All learners are exposed to concepts in their concrete form, before moving on to pictorial representations and then onto abstract learning. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly should be challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems to ensure deep learning before any acceleration through new content. Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material should consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on. We believe that all pupils, regardless of all external factors, should be given the opportunity to succeed in maths and develop a love and appreciation for it.

On a day to day basis, we assess teaching impact in the moment; we mostly use verbal feedback and children, where possible, mark their own work and identify their own errors and misconceptions and then address these. This is used to inform next steps. We utilise the White Rose end of unit tests for each topic and consolidate learning where needed. Each term we use NFER tests to assess the learning that has taken place over the full half term.

I am the vine, you are the branches’  

  (John 15:5)

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St Teresa's RC Primary School

Address: 5 McDonald Road, Irlam, Manchester, M44 5LH
Headteacher: Mrs Sandra Burgess
Tel: 0161 777 8203  /  0161 921 2053
Email: stteresas.rcprimaryschool@salford.gov.uk

St Teresa's RC Primary School

Address:
5 McDonald Road, Irlam, Manchester, M44 5LH

Headteacher:
Mrs Sandra Burgess

Telephone:
0161 777 8203

Email:
stteresas.rcprimaryschool@salford.gov.uk