Maths is the foundation for understanding the world and we want our children to know the purpose behind their learning and to apply their knowledge to their everyday lives.

At St. Michael’s, we provide high-quality Mathematics through our Explore Curriculum that is challenging, enjoyable and enriching for all of our learners and builds a schema to support and develop children’s cognitive load. Underpinned by the National Curriculum, our Mathematics curriculum allows our children to have the opportunity to become fluent in number as well as being able to reason mathematically, with increasing articulacy and accuracy. We encourage our children to take risks, explore Mathematics and make the connections needed to enjoy a greater depth of learning and secure their understanding. Our inclusive Mathematics curriculum is adaptive and provides challenge for all children from EYFS up to Year 6 and our teachers choose to progress to new learning when our learners have a secure understanding and can apply their learned skills fluently. Our curriculum aims to develop mathematical competencies and to have our children understand the power of Mathematics and how it can be applied across the curriculum. By the time our children reach the end of their Primary Mathematics journey, we endeavour for them to be able to use mathematics in different contexts, talk like a Mathematician by using the vocabulary they have obtained through explicit teaching and retrieval practice and have a mathematically curious mind.

Please look on twitter for #STMmaths to to experience maths in action!

There are four main components to our lessons at St. Michael’s. Each part is crucial to our learners’ Mathematical understanding and progression throughout each lesson. These components are: Retrieve and Reason, I do We Do, You Do and Review. Our 4-part lesson shows consistency across our school and provides our children with a familiar structure to aid their learning.

1. Retrieve & Reason – this is a crucial part of teaching at our school and allows children to recall and use what they have learned in previous lessons, topics, terms and year groups; learn more and remember more. Retrieval helps to embed learning into the long term memory. We then work through a word problem so all of our children are challenged in their mathematical abilities and have the chance to talk like a Mathematician at the beginning of a lesson.
2. I Do, We Do – this is where the main teaching happens! Our teachers model and talk through what the children will achieve during the lessons and demonstrate strategies that help our children work independently. The children have the chance to explore their new learning through partner and whole class discussion during the ‘We Do’ part of our lesson. As the children begin to gain an understanding of their objective, they can choose to go on to work independently.
3. You do – the children get a chance to use what they have learned and put it into practice. This is an opportunity for our children to use their skills and different support is offered by our staff where needed. Worked examples are visible for the children as they embed their new skill.
4. Review – the children will self-assess or self/peer mark their work so get a good understanding of their progress during the lesson. We also review by challenging the children with reasoning questions, having group discussions and writing themselves a ‘top tip’ to remember. This part of the lesson can also be an opportunity for the class teacher to address misconceptions or re-teach a concept if needed. The ‘Review’ part of the lesson is all based around what the children need and can change on a lesson-by-lesson basis.

Long term planning

The National Curriculum for Mathematics 2014 and the Early Learning Goals (Number, Shape Space & Measure) provide the long term planning for mathematics taught in the school. We base our planning around the White Rose Maths Hub scheme of learning from EYFS to Year 6. This is a scheme of learning that has been meticulously planning and developed to meet the aims of the National Curriculum. The schemes provide our teachers with exemplification for Mathematics objectives and are broken down into small steps of learning to enhance fluency and reasoning skills. We use small steps teaching to support mastery in Mathematics and to deepen understanding.

The long-term aim of the White Rose curriculum is to produce an ambitious, high-quality curriculum that is accessible to all learners. We want our children to become fluent in the fundamentals of Mathematics and White Rose embraces these aims, supports a CPA approach and gives guidance to help children become fluent mathematicians.

Below are some helpful websites that our children can use to do some Mathematics at home. The children have log in details for some of the websites, but if your child is unsure, please ask their class teacher how they can log in. Enjoy!

Just click a button below to View any document, you will then have the option to Download or Print the file. You can access all of our policies and reports on the website. Please contact the school if you would like any paper versions of our documents.