Maths
Why is Maths important?
There is not a day goes by when we will not use Maths; it is a fundamental pillar of thinking in our lives. At St Elizabeth'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. We believe that concrete resources are an integral starting point in every teaching sequence and these should be explicitly linked to pictorial representations.
When is Maths taught?
We believe that teaching is most effective when the teacher explicitly explains material in small, carefully thought out steps, giving children lots of opportunity to practise specific skills before going onto the next small step. Our adaptive teaching ensures that children are asked challenging questions and are regularly encouraged to discuss their ideas.
Our children arrive at school at 8:45am and are immediately engaged with Maths; our Morning Maths session encourages all children to practise and improve their Maths Fluency. Our morning maths session also gives the children chance to recap any learning that they have found particularly challenging. In addition to this, our children enjoy 5 Maths lessons per week and at St Elizabeth's we follow the White Rose Scheme of Work.
What do we learn about in Maths?
EYFS
Maths is one of the four specific areas within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). Our children learn about Maths through play and their daily experiences. And the more meaningful to them and hands on it is, the better.
Our environment (both indoors and out) is full of mathematical opportunities and has exciting things for children to explore, sort, compare, count, calculate and describe. We support our children to be creative, critical thinkers, problem solvers and to have a go. Each specific area is divided into Early Learning Goals, for Maths these are:
- Numerical Pattern and Number - Children learn to subitise first, then they will count and discover the value of numbers, higher and lower. These skills support them to solve problems, use money and calculate more or less.
- Shape, Space and Measure - These skills support children to understand size, weight, capacity, position, distance, time and money and compare quantities, objects and solve problems. Children will learn about the power of pattern and create their own with natural objects, shapes and action patterns.
KS1 and KS2
The National Curriculum is organised under four attainment targets which provide a framework for describing what our children learn in Maths:
1. Using and Applying Mathematics, which is a key component of the curriculum and the basis for developing key skills.
2. Number and Algebra, which is taught through number and the number system, operations and calculations and money.
3. Shape, Space and Measure;
4. Statistics
Below, you will see our Yearly Overviews for Early Years Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.
Below you will see the White Rose Maths Progression Document which allows you to see how our children enhance their learning in each year group.
Below you will see our Maths Calculation Policy. This is extremely useful as you can see how our children are expected to use their Maths skills to answer certain questions.
