"Mathematics has beauty and romance. It’s not a boring place to be, the mathematical world. It’s an extraordinary place; it’s worth spending time there." 
— Marcus du Sautoy, British mathematician 

Mathematics is a language that describes pattern and has brought many solutions to problems throughout history.  It is essential to many aspects of everyday life and so developing children’s mathematical understanding is crucial within our curriculum.  At St John’s, we aim for our pupils to become resilient, confident mathematicians, who are able to apply their skills in a wide range of different situations across the curriculum.   

In our daily mathematics lessons, we develop children’s mathematical skills progressively following the objectives of the national curriculum for each year group.  Within a unit, we teach in small, manageable steps, which we adjust according to the needs of the children.  In order to secure conceptual understanding in the early stages of learning, we use practical equipment and pictorial representations.  Fluency is developed through carefully tailored practice that is then applied in different contexts.  Pupils are taught to solve increasingly complex problems using a range of strategies.  In addition, they are taught to reason logically using mathematical language to support their explanations.   

Each maths lesson begins with a short CLIC session, following Big Maths principles, where we revisit previous learning to ensure it is embedded and to develop fluency.  Through the weekly ‘Beat That’ sheets, pupils are encouraged to improve their accuracy.  Our St John’s number bonds and times table challenges support the rapid recall of key facts, and pupils enjoy using Numbots and TT Rockstars to aid this.  Learning from school is reinforced at home through the use of Mathletics.   

Our mathematics overviews below show how our blocks of learning are organised through the year.  Our calculation policy shows how each of the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) is developed throughout the school.