“From starting points which are below average, pupils make outstanding progress and reach high standards.” Ofsted March 2014.
Here at St George’s, we understand that mathematics is essential for everyday life and is key to many other areas of the curriculum. We believe a high quality, contextualised mathematics education provides the children with a foundation for understanding the world around them and strengthens their ability to reason mathematically. Therefore, we strive to ensure that our curriculum is broad, engaging, relevant, challenging, accessible and inclusive to all children and their differing abilities. Above all, our intention is for the children to foster a love of mathematics; to demonstrate resilience and the ability to apply the knowledge and skills learnt as they progress further in their education and adult life.
Curriculum
During 2021, we began using the White Rose Maths planning as a base to inform the sequences of lessons taught. Although we utilise this quality scheme, which ensures that all National Curriculum objectives are covered, teachers have the freedom to use their professional judgement to adapt the planning and tailor the curriculum to address the needs of the children they teach. This allows us to maintain our very high standards of both teaching and learning in mathematics.
There is great breadth to the Mathematics National Curriculum. In order for our children to know more and remember more, at the start of each Lesson in Key Stage One and Key Stage Two, children are provided with questions that revisit topics and knowledge previously taught. This allows the children to frequently practise and apply their knowledge and skills.
Alongside White Rose Maths, each teacher follows our calculation policy ensuring that children are taught precise written and mental methods for each of the four number operations. Each year group’s planning (Reception to Year 6) and the calculation policy can be found at the bottom of the page.
In addition to the curriculum, to address the needs of our children, we deliver a series of financial capability lessons. These educate our children about managing money in the real world and include areas such as: money recognition, different ways of paying, types of bank accounts, saving, budgeting, debt management and how to look after money. A series of age-appropriate lessons are taught to the children from Reception to Year Six during the year. To further promote and enrich mathematics at St. George’s, we also have whole school contextualised Maths days as well as regularly celebrating children’s mathematical achievements. We run a Young Savers’ Scheme in school to promote saving money for the future. For more information about this scheme, please follow this link.
Our Mathematics curriculum is designed around securing and building on prior knowledge, exposing children to more complex content and creating opportunities to link the different threads of knowledge and learning together.
To ensure all our children develop into confident, young mathematicians throughout their time at St. George’s, our curriculum is the product of careful sequencing and linking substantive, procedural and disciplinary knowledge.
- Substantive knowledge, including declarative knowledge (facts and figures – I know that)
- Procedural knowledge (methods – I know how)
- Disciplinary knowledge (reasoning and problem solving – I know when)
- This knowledge will then lead to Conceptual Understanding (making mathematical connections – I know why…)
Foundation Stage
In the Foundation Stage, the focus is the recognition, formation and in-depth knowledge and understanding of numbers from 0-20. The children work with resources including tens frames and Numicon daily to ensure that their number fluency is to a high standard. Additionally, the children are taught real-life contextualised mathematics such as simple problem solving, days of the week, months of the year and shape recognition.
Key Stage One
In Key Stage One, our aim is to focus extensively on number and the ability to apply that knowledge to a wide range of contexts. Lessons are delivered to mixed-ability classes where the expectation is that the majority of children will progress through the curriculum at the same pace, however children who grasp concepts rapidly are challenged through rich and sophisticated problems. Children who require extra support or are on the SEND register are supported through adaptive teaching strategies that are carefully planned to meet the children’s needs. Additional adult support may be provided to ensure the curriculum and lessons are inclusive for all. In Key Stage One, there is a heavy emphasis on number fluency and arithmetic. We believe that children must have a secure understanding of number to be able to thrive, when solving more sophisticated problems in a range of contexts, within the Key Stage Two curriculum.
Key Stage Two
In Key Stage Two, we foster a highly successful approach in a primary school setting. Each year group is split into three sets based on confidence and attainment in their knowledge and understanding of the curriculum. This ensures that each child is taught at a suitable pace and level of challenge; supporting the needs of all children including the SEND and the more able. To address the needs of lower attaining children, Set 3 consists of a smaller number of children and extra adult support. Using the secure number fluency achieved in Key Stage One, children will then apply this knowledge and understanding to the more complex and challenging FDP (fractions, decimals and percentages), shape, measures and statistics questions. Whilst there is a greater focus on mastery, application and problem solving in Key Stage Two, prior learning is revisited regularly to further embed their knowledge and understanding as children progress through their yearly curriculum objectives.
Assessment
Assessment of learning and attainment at St. George’s is both formative and summative. Formative assessment is continuous and occurs on a daily basis via observation, questioning, marking, self-assessments and conversations. Summative assessments are completed at the beginning of September, the beginning of February and the beginning of July. They consist of an arithmetic paper and a reasoning paper. At the end of Key Stage Two, the children are assessed against statutory SATs papers during May.
In addition to daily mathematics lessons, assessment informs the numerous interventions put into place such as: Morning Maths, pre-tutoring, flexible grouping, extra adult support, close the gap marking, catch-up groups, tuition and booster classes to ensure that every child receives the appropriate support and challenge.
By the end of Year Four, children are expected to know their multiplication tables from 1×1 to 12×12. There is a link to a video at the end of the page, if you would like to learn more about this. Alongside the knowledge of rules and related facts; songs, traditional chanting and online games are used. Our children love testing their multiplication skills on the Times Tables Rockstars website. We have purchased a whole-school subscription to the website to ensure that that every child has their own log-in. They can compete against their peers and teachers, to answer the questions presented to them as quickly and as accurately as possible. For previous year groups, by the end of the year they are expected to be able to recall the following times tables:
Year 1 – 2, 5 and 10.
Year 2 – 2, 3, 5 and 10.
Year 3 – 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10.
Our children will be assessed on their times tables knowledge through screenings in Years One to Six each September, February and July.
Another way of ensuring that our children are fluent in their understanding of number is the teaching of number bonds. By the end of Years One and Two, children are expected to be able to rapidly recall the number bonds to 10, 20 and 100. By the end of Years 3 and 4, it is number bonds to 1,000 and in Years 5 and 6 the expectation is number bonds to 1,000, 000. Number bond screenings are completed in September, February and July to track the children’s knowledge of this.
Please see the bottom of the page to access resources to further support your child with their understanding and application of mathematics.
Links to Children’s Activities and Games
Purple Mash by 2Simple (individual login provided)
Maths – Topmarks Search
KS1 – KS1 Maths – England – BBC Bitesize
KS2 – KS2 Maths – BBC Bitesize
Fun maths games and activities | Oxford Owl
Links For Parents
Help your child be epic at maths – CBeebies – BBC
Supporting children | nn.org (nationalnumeracy.org.uk) (Free resources, courses, advice and support)
Maths Policy 2024
Calculation Policy
White Rose Whole School Yearly Overviews
Declarative and Procedural Knowledge
Key Instant Recall Facts Year 1 Key Instant Recall Facts Year 2
Key Instant Recall Facts Year 3 Key Instant Recall Facts Year 4
Key Instant Recall Facts Year 5 Key Instant Recall Facts Year 6
Reception – Maths Dictionary Year One – Maths Dictionary
Year Two – Maths Dictionary Year Three – Maths Dictionary
Year Four – Maths Dictionary Year Five – Maths Dictionary