Maths at St. Anne's Catholic Primary School
Maths Lead: Miss Russell

Intent

At St Anne’s, our intent for mathematics is to teach a rich, balanced and progressive curriculum using maths to reason, problem solve and develop fluent conceptual understanding in each area. Our aim is to ensure 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 are able to recall and apply their knowledge rapidly and accurately to problems.  
• 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 in 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. 

Implementation

At St Anne’s we use a mastery approach for teaching mathematics.  Mastering maths means pupils acquiring a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject. The whole class is taught the same thing, at the same time, with children learning at an appropriate level through support and enrichment. We extend children through depth rather than acceleration. Throughout the school, children are taught mathematics by their class teacher in mixed ability classes. All pupils have a daily mathematics lesson, in addition to the daily lesson, various intervention groups are in place in school to support all learners.

We strive to ensure that mathematics work is meaningful and purposeful.  We wish pupils to feel confident and competent when using mathematics to enable them to make sense of the world and to solve real-life problems. At St Anne’s, we teach children calculations using a concrete, pictorial and abstract approach. It is vital that all children have access to resources so that they acquire deep understanding of mathematics. Mathematical vocabulary is displayed in classrooms and around our school to ensure that children have access to it on a day-to-day basis. Children are encouraged to use STEM sentences in mathematics lessons in order to explain their reasoning.

St Anne’s follows the Power Maths scheme to ensure progression, coverage and depth of knowledge for all learners. The structure of the mathematics curriculum across the school shows clear progression in line with age related expectations. Teaching curriculum content in blocks allows children to explore skills and knowledge in depth and gain a secure understanding of particular subject matter. Key knowledge and skills are also revisited regularly allowing repetition to embed learning. Please refer to the Power Maths scheme of work for further details.

Impact

The impact of our mathematics curriculum is that children understand the relevance and importance of what they are learning in relation to real world concepts. Children know that mathematics is a vital life skill that they will rely on in many areas of their daily life. Children have a positive view of mathematics at
St Anne’s and have the confidence to ‘have a go’ in the knowledge that they can learn from their mistakes.

They are encouraged to ask questions and investigate and learn in an environment where maths is promoted as being exciting and enjoyable. Our maths books evidence work of a high standard of which children clearly take pride; the components of the teaching sequences demonstrate good coverage of fluency, reasoning and problem solving.

A range of formal and informal assessments are carried out by all teachers to ensure that each child progresses at their own rate. This allows for misconceptions and gaps to be addressed immediately as well as in future planning and through intervention groups. Our feedback and interventions support children to strive to be the best mathematicians they can be, ensuring a high proportion of children are working at are related expectation or above.