Maths at St Gerard's
“Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.”
David Hilbert, Mathematician.
Our school uses a variety of teaching and learning styles in Maths lessons. Last year, our school was part of the North West Maths Hub 'Mastery Readiness' programme, which involves collaborative training and bespoke support to our staff to incorporate mastery teaching strategies into everyday maths learning.
This year, our school has advanced further by becoming a 'Teaching for Mastery' school which aims to enhance mastery maths further to enable our children to develop deeper and more sustainable mathematical understanding. This programme allows our school to work closely with other mastery schools and mathemaical specialists who will provide training to our staff and support to enable our school to achieve its goals.
Our Maths Vision
At St Gerard’s Roman Catholic Primary School, we strive to develop resilient mathematical thinkers. We aim for our children to be independent, confident, willing to have a go and to develop skills to equip them for their future.
Everything we do in mathematics at St Gerard’s is underpinned by the aims of the national curriculum which are:
We give our children high quality mathematical experiences to develop conceptual understanding and enhance reasoning and problem solving skills. We do this by:
- Morning Maths – children in each class will spend ten to fifteen minutes at the beginning of each day to develop arithmetic proficiency. This will include practice of counting, multiplication and related division facts, number bonds and calculation skills. This work may be recorded in a daily ‘Morning Maths’ book. These sessions can involve a range of practical activities and use of online resources for example www.mini
- Structure of daily maths lessons:
- Hook – a short challenge question for children to work on independently or in pairs which promotes mathematical thinking and problem solving and reasoning. It is linked to the main focus for the lesson. This gives opportunity for all staff to observe and listen to pupils and identify misconceptions and good examples.
- Share – class teacher uses this short part of the lesson to share good examples and address any misconceptions from the hook. There is a focus on developing mathematical vocabulary and the opportunity for children to explain their mathematical thinking.
- Modelling – In this part of the lesson the teacher builds upon the shared ideas and focusses upon the main objective for the lesson. The teacher and pupils will use concrete resources and visual representations.
- Practice – children will work independently and in groups to apply and develop their learning. This will include appropriately pitched challenges which incorporate reasoning and problem solving skills. During this part of the lesson the adults will provide immediate feedback to learners and make informal assessments based on their observations. Where children are identified as having significant difficulties with the objective this will be recorded in the ‘Pick-me-up book’ for further intervention.
- Planning for learning – Liverpool planning will be used to structure the curriculum across the year. These resources will be supplemented with Build a Sequence, White Rose, Nrich and NCETM materials which are available on the teachers share drive. Short term plans will be recorded on the school planning format which will include identification of both concrete and visual resources that will be used within each lesson.
- Calculation policy – each member of staff has a copy of the calculation policy which is referred to when planning for learning.
- Marking – each member of staff has a copy of the marking policy which outlines marking expectations.
Written work – we want children to have pride in their work and we expect high quality presentation. Each piece of written work will be dated (in Roman numerals in KS2) and underlined in pencil. Where appropriate children will have
Follow what we're doing by searching #StGerardsMaths on Twitter.
Useful websites:
St Gerard's Times Tables Challenge
On this page, you can download the BRONZE, SILVER and GOLD workbooks to use at home.
