Catherine Junior School

Maths Vision Statement

Intent

At Catherine Junior School, our curriculum is designed to provide, through inspiring and engaging experiences, the knowledge and skills to become independent, life-long learners. We recognise that mathematics is essential to everyday life; critical to the development of science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. For our children to function successfully in the world around them, they must have a secure understanding of mathematics.

We teach mathematics daily focusing on the three core aims of the National Curriculum: fluency, reasoning and problem solving. Our teaching intends for children to know more, remember more and do more and is planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills.

Catherine Junior School has a ‘teaching for mastery’ approach. Mastering Maths means that pupils acquire a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject. The phrase ‘teaching for mastery’ describes the elements of classroom practice and school organisation that combine to give pupils the best chances of mastering Maths. Achieving mastery means acquiring a solid enough understanding of the maths that has been taught to enable pupils to move on to more advanced material. (NCETM)

Aims and Objectives

We believe that every child can master an understanding and love of maths, with the right teaching and support. At Catherine Junior School, we have high expectations to enable excellence for all and we base our teaching on the belief that all children have the potential to succeed regardless of any barriers or special education needs. Teaching for Mastery works on the principle that all children access the same learning in a lesson but may move at different paces. All aspects of our eight values in the Catherine Code underpin our curriculum, which promotes our school motto and ethos of ‘Together, we can do it!’ Our curriculum is led by our whole school core principles of oracy, reading, experiences and memory and recall.

We aim to develop learners who:

• Have the competence and confidence to solve a range of problems through fluency with numbers, reading skills and mathematical reasoning.
• Are encouraged to see the mathematics that surrounds them in every day experiences and find pleasure in developing vital life skills in this subject.
• Use reasoning, think logically and work systematically to solve problems both independently and with others.
• Connect knowledge to other things they have learnt and recall what they already know to apply knowledge gained.
• Communicate using a range of sophisticated mathematical language and express themselves using Oracy skills in a variety of ways.
• Have a growth mindset and a positive ‘can-do’ attitude towards the subject of Mathematics.
• Use the Catherine Code and are supportive, resilient, collaborative, enthusiastic, motivated, respectful, thoughtful and valued.