Intent:

Mathematical skills are essential to everyday life. Our aim is to maximise the potential of our children’s understanding and knowledge. Teachers encourage children to develop skills using an interactive approach, providing opportunities for children to develop their calculation skills, test the reasonableness of their answers and to solve numerical problems confidently. We want all children at Trinity St Mary’s to grow into confident and competent mathematical thinkers, who are able to use maths in real life situations.

At Trinity St. Mary’s we aim to inspire all children to have a love of mathematics. We also specifically aim to:
· Develop a positive approach to the learning of mathematics by providing challenge, personal attainment and a sense of achievement.
· Create confident children who are able to express, question and discuss ideas when undertaking activities.
· Develop skills of mental arithmetic in order to support and enhance mental calculations, check answers and foster an understanding of the relationships in mathematics.
· Use practical and investigative approaches where possible in order to strengthen understanding of pattern and relationships.
· Use mathematics to explore everyday situations and to communicate with others.
· Develop mathematical vocabulary and use of equipment appropriately.
· Involve and inform parents and carers of strategies to help their children.

The national curriculum identifies three main aims in the primary phase:

-become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.

-reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.
-can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.

Implementation:

To build pupils’ fluency, we provide many opportunities to learn, and then practise, facts and skills within daily lessons and at other times. To develop the children’s understanding, we encourage them to reason and problem solve regularly during lessons in a variety of ways. Learning is broken down into a sequence of clear, connected steps. To help them explore and develop their mathematical thinking, the children use a wide range of physical resources (concrete) and visual models (pictorial representations) throughout the school. This supports their understanding of mathematical concepts (abstract learning).

Planning is taken from the White Rose maths scheme and their lesson overviews are used to inform planning. In books, children will be given up to 3 layers of questions linked to the mastery approach of fluency (purple box), reasoning (green box) and problem solving (blue box). The coloured boxes allow for children to work through the layers applying their growing understanding of mathematical concepts in a range of different situations. 

Reasoning happens when the children have time to reflect on the learning, spot patterns and make connections. To encourage this, the White Rose SOW uses a bank of familiar activities e.g. true or false, odd one out, spot the mistake, show me in a different way, what is the same what is different, sometimes always never etc. We introduce the children to a range of routine and non-routine problem types such as finding all possibilities, logic, visual and word problems.  All of these activities promote deeper learning.

In the Early Years, the children engage in mathematical activities in lots of ways. Teachers cover the topics through a daily maths meeting carpet session and a weekly focus activity. Mathematical learning is constantly encouraged within the indoor and outdoor learning environments, through free play and role-play areas. These include access to sand, water and construction resources. Our experienced practitioners will also make the most of every learning opportunity as it arises throughout the day. Formal teaching, is delivered following the Development Matters Statements.  In Reception, the lessons follow the White Rose Scheme of Work.

In Y4, the children complete the statutory Multiplication Tables Check (MTC). They will have spent several years working towards the target of knowing all times tables up to 12.  They will have many opportunities to complete and embed their knowledge within Y4 through regular classroom, homework and online practise, using resources such as Hit the Button. Children that do not pass the test will continue to be supported with this target in Y5.

At TSM, usually, all children will take part and learn within the class lesson. Within lessons, teachers and teaching assistants will target support for a range of abilities, to enable pupils to achieve an age-related level wherever possible. This may involve a greater level of scaffolding and/or access to additional mathematical support materials. However, there may be children working towards different learning outcomes that are more closely matched to their ability. Pupils with more complex SEND may be taught in small groups or have a 1:1 teaching session out of the classroom. Additional mathematical language support is provided through SALT interventions, such as Explore and Talk and Word Aware.

More able pupils are stretched within lessons through the use of reasoning and problem solving to deepen their understanding. We also take part in local projects or enrichment opportunities to extend pupils that show ability in Maths e.g. Wandsworth Maths competitions.