At St Alphonsus RC Primary School, we put Christ at the centre of our teaching and learning. Our curriculum stems from our Mission Statement:
God lives in me. I am His witness.
I respect everybody, everybody respects me.
In our loving school, everyone is unique.
Just like the flowers in the field, as they
grow, we too grow in God’s love each day.
The life and teaching of Jesus and the values of the Gospel underpin all aspects of school life.
Why do we teach Mathematics at St Alphonsus RC Primary School?
Mathematics teaches us how to make sense of God’s world around us through developing a child’s ability to calculate, to reason and to solve problems. Maths enables children to understand and appreciate relationships and pattern in both number and space in their everyday lives. Through their growing knowledge and understanding, children learn to appreciate the contribution made by many cultures to the development and application of mathematics.
At St Alphonsus Primary School, we want our children to receive a high-quality mathematics education so that all pupils are fluent in the fundamentals, have the ability to reason mathematically and can apply their knowledge and understanding to solve problems set in a range of meaningful contexts. The curriculum is carefully sequenced to combine knowledge, concepts and procedures, systematically building skills and, over time, drawing on connections between mathematical ideas. We want pupils to have an appreciation of how important mathematics is in our lives and aim to nurture a sense of fun and curiosity about the subject.
To see mathematics as being relevant to their world and applicable to everyday life as well as being something that they will need as they move on through their school life and ultimately to the world of employment. To that end, a high-quality, interrelated and creative maths experience should be one that develops the children’s ability to think mathematically and allows them to apply the skills they have developed in a variety of ways.
Our curriculum is intended to divide new material into manageable steps lesson by lesson. The school uses a variety of teaching and learning styles in mathematics lessons with a range of practical, class, group and independent work undertaken across the school. We recognise that in all our maths groups there will be children with different mathematical strengths and weaknesses, so provide carefully planned learning challenges for all pupils using a range of strategies to ensure high impact, timely intervention is in place where needed. Emphasis is placed on developing a secure understanding and recall of times tables facts.
We want children to leave St Alphonsus Primary School with an ‘I can do Maths’ attitude and be able to take on the mathematical challenges they will face in their future education and lives.