What does Maths look like at SMAAA?

Intent

At St Michael and All Angels Primary School we aim to nurture and deveop our pupils to become numerate children who are confident using and applying skilss and mathematical understanding through a wide range of situations. We are dedicated, through the high quality teaching of mnathematics, to providing our children with the essential life skills of:

• understanding number and calculation
• problem solving
• enquiry
• reasoning

We aim to create an environment which encourages an enjoyment and interest in maths, as well as developing the understanding of new mathematical concepts. We strive to teach a fun but focussed curriculum, which supports all children to reach their full potential. 

We have adopted a mastery approach to tecahing maths and beleive that every child can succeedwhen provided with the tools to enable them to understand key concepts, reason mathematically and make connections to understand the world around them. We have been developong this across school for the past 4 years, working alongside the North West 3 Maths Hub to embed this approach within school.

Implementation:

Maths at SMAAA is taught through daily maths lessons and key facts and skills are also revisted during Mastering Number sessions in EYFS and KS1 and through daily Basic Skills sessions in KS2. Our lessons are based around the progression and small steps approach of the White Rose scheme but are adapted to meet the needs of our children, ensuring depth of fluency, problem solving and reasoning skills through use of a wide range of other resources, high quality planning and teaching to ensure progress. Our children are provided with many engaging opportunities to work mathematically and make connections in their daily lives. Following the mastery approach, the majority of children will work through the curriculum objectives at broadly the same pace, however are supported and challenged appropriately through questioning and deeper thinking, not through working on different tasks or moving on to new content. We spend longer on key mathematical concepts and ideas to give all learners the practice and depth of understanding that they need.

At SMAAA we now also use the Ready To Progress Criteria provided by NCETM to ensure that teaching from year to year is progressive and we are not unnecessarily repeating learning but at the same time ensuring that we are working consistently on closing gaps from previous year groups that have been created since the COVID pandemic. Targeted interntions are also being used to support this.

Our 5 part lesson structure allows the children to recall prior learning, understand and use rich mathematical vocabulary, develop mathematical fluency, make connections between mathematical concepts and reason and problem solve. All children across school will be taught to effectively use manipulatives and representations to support and deepen their learning. We use the same approach across school to model, practise and embed the understanding and use of mathematical language. We aim to provide many opportunites for children to remember and evaluated their own learning, applying their skills across the curriculum.

Here are some of the manipulatives and apparatus that your child might use to support their learning:

Impact

Through the high quality teaching of mathematics, we believe our children will:

• Enjoy maths and have a 'can do' attitude towrds their learning, showing self-confidence and indepenence when working mathematically
• Understand and use mathematical vocabulary as atool for explaining their ideas and reasoning about the world
• Become fluent with a varied range of mathematical ideas.
• Be clear in their knowledge of key facts and how these can help themas tools for understanding and solving more complex problems.
• Use their understanding of mathematical concepts confidently and with purpose.
• Be confiden to use their mathematical skills to think logically and solve problems.