Welcome to our Maths Curriculum Page!

Why Maths is Important

Maths is an essential skill that enables us to live an independent life. It teaches us how to make sense of the world around us, whether it be: calculating the total amount of money we need to purchase items, knowing what time to meet a connecting train or weighing precise amounts of ingredients when following a recipe. Maths helps us to develop problem solving and reasoning skills that allow us to solve a variety of problems in our every day lives.

National Curriculum Purpose of Study

Mathematics is a creative and highly inter-connected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. It is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. A high-quality mathematics education therefore provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.

What Maths Looks Like at Priestsic Primary School

Our main aims at Priestsic Primary are to make our children fluent in solving calculations involving the four mathematical operations and to equip them with the tools to solve a variety of problems. The units of work are, by necessity, organised into distinct areas, but pupils will make rich connections across mathematical ideas. Developing problem solving and reasoning skills is a thread that runs through all our Maths lessons. Children are constantly challenged to explain why, to prove how they know, to convince that they are correct or to find all possible outcomes. They have the opportunity to use a wide range of resources to support their learning such as hundred squares, number lines, Numicon, cubes, place value cards and other small apparatus as we follow a CPA approach in our delivery. Mathematical skills are developed across the curriculum in subjects such as Science, Design and Technology and PE.  Vocabulary is explicitly taught at the beginning of every lesson and in order to facilitate children to know more and remember more key concepts run through the whole of our curriculum and  opportunities to revisit previous learning are planned into every lesson.

Assessing Maths as Priestsic...

Working Walls

The main purpose of the working walls at Priestsic is to support children in their current learning and enable independence.

Every classroom across the school has a mathematics working wall in it.  Working walls are adapted for each age group. There are general principles for the working walls that have been agreed with teachers across the school:

• Key facts are put on the wall at the beginning of the week and then built on.

• The working walls are constructed with pupils and built on together.

• Examples of effective work are put on the wall (WAGOLLs)

• The success criteria/steps to success for a calculation is written with the pupils, rather than given to them.

• Key vocabulary is readily available and teachers expect children to use the vocabulary during maths talk and their written answers.

• Summaries and key facts from previous learning is also available on the working walls for children to refer to.

 One Key Stage 2 pupil explains, “In maths, the teacher takes a problem and then shows us how she works it out. Then she puts it on the wall. That’s really helpful to look at.”

“The working wall is a ‘third teacher’ in the room. The children know that they can use it for support, if they are not sure or need to deepen their learning.” 

Maths in Foundation Stage and Key Stage One

We follow the CPA approach in Maths. Children have lots of opportunities to, 'build it, draw it and solve it' in order to deepen their understanding of Maths concepts. We have Maths areas in every classroom in Foundation Stage and Key Stage One which allow pupils to practise, consolidation and apply their developing knowledge and skills. Our environments also provide opportunities to explore and have fun with Maths. Measuring, ordering and comparing opportunities are provided through continuous provision, as well as in other subjects, where we explicitly plan where children can apply their mathematical thinking. 

Maths in FS1 and FS2

Maths in Key Stage 1

Maths in Year 1

Maths in Year 2

Maths in Key Stage 2

We follow the CPA approach in Maths. Children have lots of opportunities to, 'build it, draw it and solve it' in order to deepen their understanding of Maths concepts. We have Maths enable tables in every classroom throughout Key Stage 2 which allow pupils to build their independence and resilience skills, as these tables are full of resources, equipment, worked examples etc. to help the children be successful on their own. 

Year 3

In Year 3, the children have been developing their place value skills by investigating the different ways they could make two-digit numbers using only 3 digit cards. They then explored only making numbers between a given start and end range.

Using the computers, they have been able to practise their times table skills on Times Tables Rockstars! 

Maths in Year 4

Children in Year 4 have been having fun exploring Roman Numerals and rounding.

Maths in Year 5

Maths in Year 6

Maths Across the Curriculum

Being numerate involves more than mastering basic mathematics. Numeracy involves connecting the mathematics that children learn at school with the out-of-school situations that require the skills of problem solving, critical judgement, and sense-making related to applied contexts.

Here at Priestsic we plan for opportunities where our children can apply what they have learnt in Maths lessons to other contexts - helping them to realise the importance of Maths and why it is needed.  

Going Deeper in Maths...

In order to make provision for children working at greater depth we have ensured to:

What our children say...

What our children think about what they are learning is incredibly important to us; they are at the heart of our curriculum. Pupil voice activities are carried out numerous times throughout the course of the year to ascertain what is working well and how things can be improved. The children's opinions, along with staff's inform the Maths subject action plan. 

Celebrating our love of Maths

Our Year 5 children took part in a competition run by Sutton Community Academy. Staff and pupils from SCA came to Priestsic to run the competitions in Mr Morley's and Miss Carter's class. All the children loved it and it was lovely to see how well the children worked together in their teams. The winning team from each class then went to Sutton Community Academy to compete against other local primary schools from Sutton. It was a pleasure to take some of our amazing Year 5s to Sutton Community Academy for the Maths Challenge competition. Our children showed such great self-belief and worked so hard! They represented Priestsic tremendously and showed our values throughout the whole day. Well done Priestsic!