Maths | St. Augustine's Catholic Primary School

Mathematics at St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School

Vision:

At St Augustine’s, we aim to promote a love of maths to enable our pupils to become enthusiastic, creative and articulate mathematicians who use their skills to become great problem solvers.

Intent:

We believe Mathematics provides pupils with a uniquely powerful toolkit to comprehend and transform the world. These tools encompass logical reasoning, problem-solving skills, and the ability to think abstractly. Mathematics holds significance in daily life, permeating all facets of existence. With this in mind, we strive to cultivate in children a positive and enthusiastic outlook towards mathematics, ensuring it becomes a lasting asset.

Aligned with the National Curriculum Objectives for Mathematics, our aim is for all pupils to:

Attain fluency in the foundational principles of mathematics, achieved through diverse and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems. This approach fosters conceptual understanding, enabling pupils to swiftly and accurately recall and apply knowledge.
Engage in mathematical reasoning by pursuing lines of inquiry, formulating relationships and generalizations, and constructing arguments, justifications, or proofs using mathematical language.
Demonstrate proficiency in problem-solving by applying mathematical concepts to a range of routine and non-routine challenges, progressively tackling more sophisticated problems. This involves breaking down complex issues into simpler steps and demonstrating perseverance in seeking solutions.

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Implementation:

In St Augustine’s School, we adopt a mastery approach, using the National Curriculum for Mathematics as the cornerstone of our mathematics program. Our commitment lies in ensuring that every pupil attains mastery in the fundamental concepts of mathematics relevant to their age group. This ensures genuine progress and prevents any gaps in understanding as they progress through their education.

Our Maths curriculum at St Augustine’s is underpinned by the White Rose Maths Scheme of Learning and NCETM Teaching for Mastery materials. These resources facilitate both depth and breadth of learning within each mathematical strand.

We employ the CPA approach to aid pupils in understanding mathematics and establishing connections between different representations.

Concrete: Children are provided with opportunities to use concrete objects and manipulatives to enhance their understanding and ability to articulate mathematical concepts.

Pictorial: Building upon the concrete approach, children utilise pictorial representations, which serve as tools for reasoning and problem-solving.

Abstract: With a solid foundation established, children transition to an abstract approach, confidently employing numbers and key concepts.

Throughout their learning journey, our children are immersed in developing their mathematical vocabulary. This crucial mathematical language enhances students’ comprehension not only of the subject matter but also of the world around them.

Our Calculation Policy outlines the support provided to children in their mathematical progression throughout their school years.

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Impact:

A mathematical concept or skill has been mastered when a child can show it in multiple ways:

using the mathematical language to explain their ideas, and can independently apply the concept to new problems in unfamiliar situations.
Children demonstrate quick recall of facts and procedures. This includes the recollection of the times tables.
The flexibility and fluidity to move between different contexts and representations of
mathematics.
The ability to recognise relationships and make connections in mathematics.
Children show confidence in Believing that they will achieve
Children show a high level of pride in the presentation and understanding of the work.

Maths in our school is progressive and planned to meet the needs of all children. Assessments are carried out regularly to ensure children are accessing fluency, reasoning and problem-solving objectives at age related expectations. We measure the impact of our curriculum through: Assessment for Learning after every Maths lesson; End of block assessments; end of term assessments and End of Key stage SATs results. Pupils’ difficulties and misconceptions are identified through immediate formative
assessment and addressed with rapid intervention – commonly through individual
or small group support.

At St. Augustine’s, in fulling our visions, our Mathematicians will be:

fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics
able to reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and
generalisations.
able to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication.

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