Maths
Intent
At St.Luke’s, we believe that children should leave primary education as confident, resilient mathematicians with a deep conceptual understanding of the skills required to approach any maths problem. Our mission is to enable all learners to enjoy and succeed in mathematics. We want learners to think about maths beyond what is tested in national examinations and to be equipped with an understanding of mathematics that will be relevant and useful in their future studies and in the world of work. We understand that a deep grasp of mathematics is essential to enabling greater social equity and mobility.
We want our pupils to be successful not only in their schooling career, but throughout their adult lives. Through carefully designed lessons, our teachers are able to make meaningful connections between content with a high emphasis placed on problem solving. We use the White Rose Mastery programme, which has been designed on principles to provide learners with a deep conceptual understanding of mathematical principles, the ability to confidently communicate in precise mathematical language and to become mathematical thinkers.
Implementation
To ensure whole-school consistency and progression, Mathematics at St.Luke’s is planned and sequenced using White Rose, which is fully aligned with the National Curriculum. Each lesson phase provides the means to achieve greater depth. Independent work provides the means for all children to develop their fluency further, before progressing to more complex related reasoning and problem solving. The large majority of children progress through the curriculum content at the same pace. Differentiation is achieved by emphasising deep knowledge and through individual support and intervention. The learning for each year group is split into a number of learning blocks which cover all the appropriate mathematics objectives. Each concept within a block is then split into a series of small steps in order to consolidate the pupils’ conceptual understanding. The schemes ensure an integrated approach to the National Curriculum of mathematics aims of fluency, reasoning and problem solving. Practice and consolidation play a central role. Carefully designed variation within this builds fluency and understanding of underlying mathematical concepts.
Mathematics is taught through three key areas of mastery, as set by the National Curriculum so 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 problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.
Children at St. Luke’s also have weekly access to Times Table Rock Stars, which supports the fluency of times tables. In time this gives children more confidence and fluency in their reasoning and problem solving.
Impact
The school has a supportive ethos and our approach supports the children in developing their collaborative and independent skills, as well as empathy and the need to recognise the achievement of others. Students can underperform in Mathematics because they think they can’t do it or are not naturally good at it. The White Rose Mastery curriculum addresses these preconceptions by ensuring that all children experience challenge and success in Mathematics by developing a growth mindset. It is important that the children have a secure understanding of each mathematical concept before moving on. At St. Luke’s, we ensure that the children have mastered the maths in every lesson, by ensuring that teachers are expertly using assessment for learning, identifying and addressing any misconceptions as and when they arise. Where possible, teachers and teaching assistants deliver targeted focus groups and interventions based on assessment of the work produced to ensure that all children are ready to move on.
As well as assessment for learning during lessons, regular and ongoing assessment of the pupils’ outcomes informs teaching, as well as intervention, to support and enable the success of each child.
We use a variety of strategies to evaluate the knowledge, skills and understanding that our children gain as they progress from Reception to Year 6:
- Daily marking to feedback, address any misconceptions and to celebrate achievement
- Subject monitoring, including book scrutinies and deep dives into the subject
- Regular knowledge assessments, using a range of creative approaches
- Termly NTS tests to support our teachers’ assessment
- Regular Pupil Progress meetings to identify need for intervention
Inclusion
At St. Luke’s we are passionate about inclusion in our teaching and learning. We ensure that all abilities are able to access each Maths lesson. We understand that not all children progress at the same pace and that is why we use pre teaching prior to a lesson, individualised support during a lesson and targeted interventions post lesson to ensure all of our children are able to access the learning in their environment. Likewise, some children who grasp concepts quickly are challenged through more sophisticated problems.