Mathematics
At St Sampson’s CE Primary School, we take a mastery approach to teaching maths. This means spending time building children’s understanding in a maths area before moving on to a new concept. Learning is taken at an appropriate pace to ensure children are able to keep up as well as providing experiences for children who are grasping ideas quickly to show a deeper understanding.
Throughout the school, we ensure that children develop a solid understanding; this begins with the use of concrete materials or manipulatives that children can physically handle before moving onto pictorial representations and then abstract operations. Models to develop understanding are used consistently and progressively throughout the school and support the development of more formal written methods. This learning is continually consolidated and skills are retained through regular maths fluency lessons where children revisit something they have learnt this week, last week, and last term. This runs alongside daily ‘maths minutes’ where children begin each day practising towards a personal target.
Our maths lessons are vibrant environments where children are actively engaged in learning and using mathematical language, often working with a talk partner – sometimes similar ability, sometimes mixed ability. Resources to support learning are readily available and appropriate models and examples are displayed around the classrooms to aid and support learning and independence. Children are encouraged to answer in full sentences and explain their reasoning.
We provide opportunities for children to take part in mathematical events outside of school such as high achievers events at local secondary schools. As a school, we take part in the NSPCC Number Day. Maths is high profile in our weekly celebration assemblies with children being delighted at receiving certificates for attainment, effort and progress.
Ultimately, we aim for all pupils to:
- Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics so that they develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
- Be able to solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of problems including real-life scenarios
- Reason mathematically using mathematical language
- Have an appreciation of number and number operations, which enables mental calculations and written procedures to be performed efficiently, fluently and accurately to be successful in mathematics