Traditionally, Maths has been taught by memorising key facts and procedures, which tends to lead to superficial understanding that can easily be forgotten. At St Andrews C of E Primary School, we believe that children should be able to select which mathematical approach is most effective in different scenarios, therefore we follow a 'Maths Mastery' approach. At St Andrews we believe all our pupils can achieve in mathematics! There is no such thing as a ‘Maths person’, that is the belief that some pupils can do maths and others cannot. A typical Maths lesson will provide the opportunity for all children, regardless of their ability, to work through Fluency, Reasoning and Problem Solving activities on a daily basis. Maths at St Andrews is a journey and a long-term goal, achieved through exploration, clarification, practice and application over time. At each stage of learning, children will be able to demonstrate a deep, conceptual understanding of the topic and be able to build on this over time.
Objects, pictures, words, numbers and symbols are everywhere. The mastery approach incorporates all of these to help children explore and demonstrate mathematical ideas, enrich their learning experience and deepen understanding. Together, these elements help cement knowledge so pupils at St Andrews truly understand what they’ve learnt.
All pupils, when introduced to a key new concept, will have the opportunity to build competency in this topic by taking this approach. Pupils are encouraged to physically represent mathematical concepts. Objects and pictures are used to demonstrate and visualise abstract ideas, alongside numbers and symbols.
Concrete – children have the opportunity to use concrete objects and manipulatives to help them understand and explain what they are doing.
Pictorial – children then build on this concrete approach by using pictorial representations, which can then be used to reason and solve problems.
Abstract – With the foundations firmly laid, children can move to an abstract approach using numbers and key concepts with confidence.