Maths
"A high quality mathematics education provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty of the power of mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject." (The National Curriculum 2014)
The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework (Nursery/Reception) and the Key Stage 1 National Curriculum (Year 1/Year 2) provides us with a basis of the knowledge, skills and techniques that our children will learn throughout their time at St Chad's.
Maths is an important part of learning for all children in the Early Years and receiving a good grounding in maths is an essential life skill. Introducing maths to children from an early age helps to develop their understanding of all elements of problem solving and reasoning in a broad range of contexts. By the end of the Foundation Stage, children should be able to count confidently, develop a deep understanding of the numbers to 10, the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers.
As with all other areas of learning, the teaching and learning of mathematics in our Nursery and Reception classes takes place both indoors and outdoors through a wide range of practical and "hands on" activities.
Staff use their knowledge and expertise to plan for a high quality learning environment which provides children with lots of opportunities to explore different aspects of number and shape, space and measures and learn new concepts. The children have a wide range of structured play resources available to them throughout the year - this is known as "continuous provision". For example, children may learn about capacity through their water play, both indoors and outdoors. In addition to the opportunities for child initiated play indoors and outdoors, staff plan adult led activities for groups of children and individuals based on their observations of what children know and can do. They plan activities to address any misconceptions that have arisen and to introduce new concepts.
The principal focus of maths teaching in Key Stage 1 is to ensure that children develop confidence and mental fluency with whole numbers, counting and place value. This involves working with numerals, words and the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), with practical resources.
At this stage, children develop their ability to recognise, describe, draw, compare and sort different shapes and use the related vocabulary. Teaching also involves using a range of measures to describe and compare different quantities such as length, mass, capacity/volume, time and money.
Across Key Stage 1, children are taught to:
- become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice.
- reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument.
- can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication.
At St Chad's, we strive to make maths fun, engaging and interesting for all children. We follow White Rose Maths as a scheme of learning which provides opportunities for the children to be come fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, to reason mathematically in a range of situations and to develop skills in problem solving. In every maths lesson our children have the opportunity to develop their fluency, problem solving and reasoning skills. We do this through the concrete, pictorial and abstract approach. This means our children get to see and do the maths using concrete resources. They then move onto doing this through pictures and drawings. When they are confident they move onto more abstract work.
At St Chad’s we recognise the importance of quick maths and aim for all of our children to become fluent mathematicians. All children in Key Stage 1 take part a fifteen minute ‘mental maths’ session daily. During this time they count, ask questions, answer questions and look for patterns.
A copy of our curriculum progression map for Maths can be viewed below.