Maths Intent

At St Mary of Charity Primary School, our Maths Curriculum gives children the opportunity to acquire knowledge in a planned and progressive way.  They are able to demonstrate mastery of these approaches by learning a new concept, practicing it and applying it to different contexts/subjects (problem solving).  We use adaptive teaching strategies to ensure that all children can acquire and embed the knowledge that is specific for their year group.  

We recognise that at SMC the most productive lessons are ones where children have experienced Maths through manipulatives. The use of manipulatives improves visualisation and Speech and Language which in turn enables children to verbalise and in time to write their reasoning. Children will then apply this knowledge across other areas of the curriculum.  

Robust assessment in each unit enables us to identify children’s starting points, tailor adult support (teacher and TA) and challenge children accordingly. 

Maths Implementation 

• As a school we follow the national curriculum for Maths to create our long-term plans that are specific to each year group. Units are sequenced so that children use prior knowledge in order to access their learning for example Number and Place Value provides the foundation for children to be able to confidently add and subtract. 
• Long term plans are tailored for each year group depending on the national curriculum for example year 4/5 will spend more time learning about fractions than year 1/2 because they have more new knowledge that they need to consolidate within this area.  
• An assessment will occur at the beginning of each new unit known as the ‘blue assessment’. This assessment is used to gain an understanding of children’s prior knowledge.  Children will then be grouped accordingly and assigned an appropriate task, this may be teach, practice, apply or embed (explanations of these are given below).  
• For each learning objective within a unit children will follow a journey of teach, practice, apply and embed. (see below).  All these activities are pitched to age related expectations and staff use different adaptive teaching strategies to scaffold pupil’s understanding.  
• Concrete resources, pictorial representations and written methods will be used throughout learning as a teaching strategy.  Problem solving and reasoning is taught through apply and embed tasks . 
• Marking and planning happens on a daily basis in order to group children based on their current knowledge and their next step. 
• Daily formative assessment is used to adapt teaching and assign adult support in order to scaffold future learning and enable children to make progress.   

At St Mary of Charity Primary School, we follow a TPAE system (as mentioned above)  designed and created for the children of our school. Each learning objective explores four elements.

Teach: The children are taught the new knowledge and the manipulatives that can be used to scaffold their learning.

Practice: The children then independently practice using this knowledge.

Apply: The children apply this knowledge to a variety of problems. They are required to give their reasoning at this stage. 

Embed: The children use the knowledge they have gathered to attempt investigative problems. 

We use 'Times Table Rock stars' to help us to learn our times tables. Please click on the link below to login.