Intent

At St Lawrence, we believe that a secure understanding of Mathematics is a fundamental skill needed for life. We aim for our children to transition to secondary school with a strong sense of number and with the ability to apply their arithmetic understanding across new topics that they will explore. Through a challenging and ambitious curriculum, we aim to prepare them well for the future; we believe that children should be resilient problem solvers, who can independently manipulate number effectively in new contexts.  We aim to develop children’s confidence and passion for Maths throughout their time with us at St Lawrence. Our systematic teaching of Mathematics aims to ensure high levels of automaticity, resulting in pupils developing an in-depth knowledge across the units being taught. They will become extremely familiar with number facts and formal methods during their time with us – developing on prior learning within previous topics studied. All of our teachers strive for their children to succeed and thrive in Maths; our curriculum is successfully differentiated to ensure that all children are secure in their understanding and appropriately challenged too. Teachers are consistently assessing individual attainment and where necessary interventions and support are put in place to close any gaps that may arise. We aim to intervene early to ensure that children are successful and progress is made throughout their St Lawrence journey.

Implementation

At St Lawrence we believe that a secure understanding of number is crucial to all other areas of Maths. As a result, we volunteered our school to become a part of the Key Stage 1 ‘Mastering Number’ scheme developed by NCETM. The project aims to secure firm foundations in the development of good number sense for all children from Reception through to Year 1 and Year 2. The aim, over time, is that children will leave KS1 with fluency in calculation and a confidence and flexibility with number, through the use of a practical resource called a ‘Rekenrek’. Attention is given to key knowledge and understanding needed in Reception classes, and progression is ensured throughout KS1 to support success in the future. The approach is also successful in targeting specific children who may require interventions throughout their time with us at St Lawrence.

Daily arithmetic practise is developed in Key Stage 2 where all year groups complete a short 10-minute fluency session with their classes; this successfully develops pupils understanding of number from Key Stage 1 and Early Years. Children learn the fundamental methods needed to support their understanding of the four operations as well as calculations which involve fractions, decimals and percentages in UKS2.  They are encouraged to work systematically, finding efficient ways to work out problems. This daily retrieval ensures progress is made, providing opportunities for spaced learning which will ultimately support the end of Key Stage 2 SATs Arithmetic Test in Year 6.

To ensure that children are challenged and supported effectively and consistently in Mathematics, our school bases its teaching on the ‘Whiterose Scheme’ supported by other resources. Here children are able to assess all elements of the curriculum which allow them to explore different avenues and depths of learning. Through varied tasks Maths has become accessible to various types of learners and children of different abilities. This has helped us to adopt a whole-class mastery approach to learning, ensuring that teaching, vocabulary, models and use of language is constant throughout the school. Each year group has a maths working wall which can be referred and added to during the teaching of a specific unit of work – proving additional scaffolding, worked examples and support for those who need it. If children are performing above age-related expectations, we deepen their learning with further reasoning and problem-solving tasks.

By the end of Year 6, we aim to equip our children with the ability to independently tackle a range of problems. At St Lawrence we believe that reasoning is key to long-term learning. The approach states that when children can make logical sense of mathematical ideas, they can use that reasoning for future learning and real-world problem-solving. With this in mind, children are encouraged to complete a range of problem solving and reasoning tasks during their lessons in maths. These tasks are designed to provide them with a deeper understanding of the topics within the primary curriculum, fundamentally preparing them effectively for the end of Key Stage 2 SATs tests.

Impact

Throughout their St Lawrence journey, our pupil’s attainment is assessed to ensure progress and to identify any gaps or areas of weakness which require additional support. In Early Years, children are monitored and observed carefully through targeted interactions and activities. Understanding is monitored and built upon throughout their initial year with us. Teachers are secure in their understanding when accessing children against the Early Learning Goals at the end of the foundation stage.

Within lessons, teachers are constantly providing both verbal and written feedback to their children. In line with our feedback policy, yellow highlighters are used to identify work that has been completed correctly and green highlighters show where mistakes have been made. Specific needs, comments and misconceptions are recorded daily in teachers feedback books where interventions or support can then be acted upon. Children are aware of this marking system and feel confident to edit their own work in black pen- making corrections where needed.

After each Maths topic studied in Years 1 through to 5, children complete an end of block assessment from the Whiterose scheme. This is an opportunity to celebrate what has been achieved and provides targeted support to children who need it. Alongside this block-based approach, all teachers complete a termly White Rose Maths Assessment with their classes, assessing fluency, reasoning and problem-solving. This gives children the opportunity to retrieve knowledge across a range of units – spacing their learning and ensuring that knowledge has been retained and retrieved. These termly assessments are crucial to develop children’s understanding of how arithmetic and problem-solving questions are laid out and gets them used to the ‘test technique’ needed for the end of Key Stage 2 SATs statutory assessments.

With the end of Key Stage 2 SATs assessments in mind, Year 6 constantly track progress across arithmetic and problem solving for each child throughout the year. Children are encouraged to complete a base-line assessment at the start of the year and have opportunities to improve and ‘beat’ their scores throughout the year. These assessments develop confidence in individuals and provide opportunities to support children further in interventions and booster clubs after school.  We aim for children to go into SATs week with confidence and the understanding that they are there to show off what they can do. We are always extremely proud of how positive and resilient our children are by the end of their time with us and they make us extremely proud of what they achieve in the final assessments.