"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 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 mathematical reasoning strategies, using mathematical language to support their explanations.   

Each maths lesson begins with building knowledge of key facts as well as retrieval from previous learning.  In Key Stage 1, this is supported with the Number Sense Number Facts Fluency programme.  In Year 3, pupils are given a chance to revisit key number facts skills before moving on to the Number Sense Times Table Fluency programme.  This then continues through Key Stage 2 with Year 6 completing a weekly times table fluency booklet.  White Rose 'Flashback Four' question slides are used to support recall of past learning across the school.

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.