Maths at Parochial
'Parochial Cares', our mission is to prepare children for the future by living, learning and growing together in God.
To live life... life in all its fullness (John 10:10)
Vision:
At Parochial Primary we value a maths curriculum that is creative, engaging and accessible to all, this is achieved through using the Inspire scheme, which will support and build on previously acquired knowledge and skills. We aim to maximise the development of every child’s ability and academic achievement by not putting a ceiling on what they can achieve.
Through the use of the concrete-pictorial-abstract (CPA) approach to teaching maths, we aim to deepen our children’s understanding of concepts, rather than teach them a set procedure to achieve the correct answer.
Implementation:
At Parochial we are:
Educating for Wisdom, knowledge and skills in maths through the Power Maths scheme, this is an approach to teaching maths that is based upon the influential Cockcroft Report, which is a research study on the teaching and learning of maths in England.
The scheme provides a highly scaffolded work frame with problem solving at its heart. It is built upon a focused, coherent and cumulative spiral curriculum that continuously builds upon itself; consolidating the children’s knowledge, enabling them to reach a deeper understanding. The scheme encourages extensive practice to develop fluency and mastery, so that every child - across all abilities - can succeed at maths.
Central to Power maths is the concrete-pictorial-abstract (CPA) approach, including bar modelling to support problem solving. These approaches help children to make connections to develop a deeper understanding.
To supplement (or scaffold) children’s learning, teachers will also use a variety of resources from White Rose which is aligned with Power Maths.
Educating for hope and aspiration through Maths by ensuring that a comprehensive and spiral mastery maths curriculum experience is provided for our children where they can use and develop previously learnt skills whilst challenges greater depth children. Our maths curriculum has an emphasis on reasoning and explanation skills, providing activities which develop comprehensive skills as well as enabling children to achieve aspirational targets. Partner work is used as part of our maths lessons to help develop confidence and fluency within the children. To raise our children’s hopes and aspirations, children are encouraged to compete in Sumdog competitions and to achieve in school maths badges linked to multiplication facts and their mental maths skills.
Educating for community and living well together by encouraging our children to enter local and national competitions online. Through participation in these competitions, our children develop an appreciation and interest in how other children are progressing in their learning and develop a sense of competition. They also developing skills in working as a class team in order to achieve collaborative high scores.
We also provide bi-annual parent workshops, where parents are encouraged to come into school to see how their children learn maths and will experience some of the activities that take place in our daily maths lessons. The aim is to support parents so that they feel confident enough to support their child/children at home.
Children are challenged to support each other by working in partners and table groups where they are encouraged to help and support each other in their daily class work as well as providing them with opportunities to develop their own reasoning skills.
Educating for dignity and respect by working in mixed ability pairs throughout the school. This teaches our children to work collaborative, supporting each other’s strengths and weakness, whilst providing opportunities for the children to discuss and problem solve together. Through weekly celebration assemblies, we praise the achievements of children and encouraging them to better themselves. Through our use of the CPA teaching approach, children learn to use a variety of manipulatives, drawings and written methods to support them in finding different ways of thinking about and tackling difficult problems.
Impact:
By the end of KS2, we aim for our children to have made at least expected progress and to be confident and fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics with a deeper understanding of what they are doing and why. We also aim from them to have the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately so that they are able to go on to access more complex mathematical concepts, with a sound basis to work from.