Maths

 At St Patrick’s, we believe that every child can succeed in maths. We provide a curriculum where children have access to maths that is both challenging and enjoyable. We provide opportunities for children to use maths in the real world such as; enterprise week, charity collections, geography field work and many others.

The National Curriculum outlines that all children should:

• Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasing complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
• Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.
• Can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions

Our school follows the CPA (Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract)  approach when solving calculations.

Concrete

Children use equipment to represent and manipulate calculations physically. They do this in a range of different ways. Showing children multiple representations allows teachers to identify any misconceptions or gaps in their learning. This hands on approach starts in the early years and continues right the way up into Year 6 where children may be seen using equipment to help them solve complicated fractions questions! It is vital that children understand what is happening with numbers in a calculation, we do not want children follow a set of rules without a deep understanding.

 Pictorial

Once children have mastered manipulating equipment to represent calculations, they move on to drawing pictorial representation of equipment. This provides children with the understanding of what is happening without the need of equipment.

Abstract

This is the 'end goal', the formal, written method for calculations. For example, column addition or subtraction. We only want children to use this approach when they are secure with the first two stages. This is to ensure that they fully understand what is happening with numbers.

Addition - Concrete, Pictorial and Abstract

(More videos coming soon)