We want our children to understand, as they progress through the school, that maths is not only essential to everyday life, necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment but is also a fun and engaging experience.

Our maths curriculum provides children to constantly revisit skills taught so that they become fluent in these areas, moving on to apply them in different ways. The teaching of mathematics contextualises skills so that children can relate to how they would be used in their everyday lives. Time is given, on building on a skill, to develop their own understanding of mathematics and explore patterns and different representations of number. 

At St Laurence, the expectation is that the majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace. Appropriate scaffolding is used to enable all pupils are able to access any given task. We aim for each child to be confident in each yearly objective and develop their ability to use this knowledge to develop a greater depth understanding to solve varied fluency problems as well as problem solving and reasoning questions.

However, decisions about when to progress should always be based on the security of pupils’ understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly are challenged through rich
and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content. Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on.
Where necessary, earlier material should consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on.

Children are positive about maths lessons and build their resilience to be able to solve complex maths problems. Collaborative, partner and independent work allow for a range of dialogues on the maths skills taught and build a team work ethos of support and a growth mind-set.

Mathematical vocabulary is an essential part of each lesson and the children need to understand this within the area they are studying and be able to make rich connections across other areas within this subject. Each lesson provides children with the opportunity to reason through their ideas, use their mathematical language to explore a line of enquiry to solve routine and non-routine problems.

The Oxford University Press have developed this site to support parents in helping their children with mathematics. You'll find lots of advice and support, games and activity ideas for how best to help your child develop as a mathematician. There's also information on what is taught in primary school maths lessons, and what some of the 'jargon' means!

There are lots of ways in which you can bring maths to life for your child through simple games and activities. Whether out shopping, using the context of money to help develop your child's skills, or helping them to better understand measurement when baking or putting together the new rabbit's hutch, there's always an opportunity for a 'maths moment'!  

Children make progress best as mathematicians when they regularly repeat skills and practise them until they become embedded.  This can be quite a long process sometimes, and so the use of the context of an exciting game or interesting activity can be highly motivating.  In our experience, our children learn best when they are having fun and that's what games are for!

Board games can be great for developing a child's maths skills too!  Playing these can be a really powerful way for young children to become comfortable with our number system, spotting patterns and literally playing with numbers.

We make a lot of use of online maths games and activities in school, some of the other links below are our most popular.

Why not try some of them out and let us know what you think…?

We have a big focus on times tables in school and use Times Tables Rock Stars (TTRS) to help us! TTRS is a fun and challenging programme that helps the children to master their tables.

Times Table Rock stars works on the premise that World Famous Rock musicians are the best at what they do because they have spent hours practising guitar chords, writing music or playing on the drums. It is just the same with times tables - all Times Tables Rock Stars need to do is practise and practise and practise.

Click here to read a Parents’ Guide to TTRS

Here is a Parents’ Guide to Times Tables which is packed full of other ways in which you can support your child with learning their tables!

KIRFs are designed to support the development of mental maths skills that underpin much of the maths work in our school. They are particularly useful when calculating, adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing. They contain number facts such as number bonds and times tables that need constant practise and rehearsal, so children can recall them quickly and accurately.

Instant recall of facts helps enormously with mental agility in maths lessons. When children move onto written calculations, knowing these key facts is very beneficial. For children to become more efficient in recalling them easily, they need to be practised frequently and for short periods of time.

Each half term, children will focus on a Key Instant Recall Fact (KIRF) in school and we share this with parents so they can be practised at home too.