Mellor St Mary CE Primary School

Learning Together

Mathematics

Mathematic Curriculum Statement

Through our Christian Faith, we acknowledge our responsibility to all, to enrich lives and show love and respect within our school family.

We believe in lifelong learning aiming to equip our children to live life today and for tomorrow rooted in Christian love.

For with God nothing shall be impossible (Luke 1:37) 

Mission:

Our school is the church on the hill; the light that brings Jesus into the lives of all in our community.

Upon this rock I will build my church (Matthew 16:18)

Intent:

Our Mathematical Curriculum has been designed to ensure each, and every, child can ‘understand and achieve in maths' by offering: a progressive spiral curriculum which includes challenging, practical, relevant mathematical reasoning and problem-solving learning, where basic concepts and skills are at the heart.  

It is bespoke to the needs of the pupils at Mellor St Mary, through a mastery approach by focussing on mathematical language, subject specific knowledge, skills and understanding as set out in the National Curriculum, to ensure every child can succeed in maths.

We are committed to ensuring our children will experience individual and collaborative learning experiences, a positive growth mind set, a sense of responsibility and challenges that take them beyond the classroom in-line with our whole school vision that ‘with God nothing is impossible’.

As a small mixed-age school, we respond to the needs of our learners and their interests by ensuring we focus on children’s personal improvement and development through the acquisition of new skills and mastering new situations, learning experiences and raising awareness from the local area to national and global arenas. Thus, we will develop outward looking pupils who are able to engage in mathematical learning and have an understanding of its place in the wider world.

Ultimately our maths curriculum is intended to:

Develop our head and body : What we learn
Develop our hearts and character: How we learn
Develop our actions and attitudes: How we show resilience and a willingness to learn from mistakes
Develop our moral compass: Know where maths fits into the world

Implementation

Through quality teaching of mathematical knowledge, skills and vocabulary within the core subject itself and its application across the curriculum, we aim to ensure all children:

Explore ideas and different methodologies
Develop fluency in the recall of facts and the performing of skills
Use representations to aid their mathematical understanding
Develop and use a variety of strategies for investigation and problem solving
Show courage to ‘have a go’, developing resilience as they do so
Evaluate their own and other’s work using the language of maths
Appreciate the power of mathematics in society and its ability to make life better

All children will be challenged to be inquisitive, compassionate, courageous and creative learners, having opportunities to influence their own learning through all aspects of maths.

Effective learning characteristics include rich collaboration; reflective thinking on what they have done; the use of higher order questioning rather than mere recall; and creating connections between topics. These will all drive effective teaching and learning in mathematics at Mellor St Mary.

Early Years Pupils will be taught mathematics through:

discrete teaching
continuous provision

Achieved through

play
rich collaborative tasks
an emphasis on key ideas embedded through learning tasks

Both KS1 and KS2 Pupils will be taught mathematics through:

concrete methods
followed by pictorial representations
leading to abstract concepts

In KS1 the principle focus will be:

To ensure that pupils develop confidence and mental fluency with whole numbers, counting and place value involving working with numerals, words and the 4 operations, including with practical resources [for example, concrete objects and measuring tools].
Pupils develop their ability to recognise, describe, draw, compare and sort different shapes and use the related vocabulary. Teaching will also involve using a range of measures to describe and compare different quantities such as length, mass, capacity/volume, time and money.
By the end of year 2, pupils should know the number bonds to 20 and be precise in using and understanding place value (an emphasis on practice at this early stage will aid fluency)
Pupils read and spell mathematical vocabulary, at a level consistent with their increasing word reading and spelling knowledge at key stage 1.

In lower KS2 the principal focus will be:

Ensuring that pupils become increasingly fluent with whole numbers and the 4 operations, including number facts and the concept of place value, to aid in the development of efficient written and mental methods and the performance of calculations accurately with increasingly large whole numbers.
The development of their ability to solve a range of problems, including with simple fractions and decimal place value.
Helping pupils to draw with increasing accuracy and develop mathematical reasoning so they can analyse shapes and their properties, and confidently describe the relationships between them.
Ensuring that they can use measuring instruments with accuracy and make connections between measure and number.
Helping year 4 pupils to memorise their multiplication tables up to and including the 12 multiplication table and show precision and fluency in their work.
Pupils reading and spelling mathematical vocabulary correctly and confidently, using their growing word-reading knowledge and their knowledge of spelling.

In Upper KS2 the principal focus will be:

Ensuring that pupils extend their understanding of the number system and place value to include larger integers, developing the connections pupils make between multiplication and division with fractions, decimals, percentages and ratio.
Developing their ability to solve a wider range of problems, including increasingly complex properties of numbers and arithmetic, and problems demanding efficient written and mental methods of calculation.
With the foundation in arithmetic, pupils are introduced to the language of algebra as a means for solving a variety of problems.
Teaching in geometry and measures which consolidates and extends knowledge developed in number, also ensuring that pupils classify shapes with increasingly complex geometric properties and learn the vocabulary they need to describe them.
At the end of Year 6, pupils be fluent in written methods for all 4 operations, including long multiplication and division, and in working with fractions, decimals and percentages.
Pupils being able to read, spell and pronounce mathematical vocabulary correctly.

Impact:

As pupils progress, they will develop resilience and fluency in their maths ensuring that they can:

Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry
Conjecture relationships and generalisations
Develop an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language

At the end of each key stage, our children will know, apply and understand the skills, knowledge and processes specified in the National Curriculum for mathematics.

Our children will have a confident and valid set of mathematical skills and knowledge supported by Christian values which can be used to not only further their education but help them in their life’s journey. They will have learnt more, remembered more, enjoyed and developed creatively, spiritually, socially and emotionally, enabling them to be ready for the next stage of their education.