At St Joseph's 'We  Maths'.

We have Maths ambassadors that set us challenges every week and we receive a prize during Friday's merit assembly, if we get the questions right and 'have a go'. 

We celebrate Maths days across the school and thrive to make Maths exciting, challenging, engaging and fun for all. Please have a look at what we have been up to...

Maths Ambassadors

Maths is one of our main priorities at St Joseph's Primary.

In order to further promote our love of maths at school, we are introducing a Maths Ambassador Role to provide children’s voice in how we promote maths throughout the school. The role will be available to KS2 children who are able to show that they meet the criteria below. The children have been introduced to the role in assembly and now need to complete the require responsibilities each week. 

Maths Ambassadors:

* Maths Ambassadors are chosen for their love of maths, their willingness to share this passion with others and enthusiasm to promote maths throughout the school, they are not necessarily the most able at maths, as Maths is open to all.

Maths Ambassador Roles and Responsibilities:

Part of the job of the maths ambassador is to

* Promote a love of maths across the school.

* Share their problem solving strategies and demonstrate resilience when solving problems.

* Demonstrate exemplary mental maths and be an excellent role model for others.

* Support pupils with maths at lunchtimes.

* Help senior leaders in school with maths events across the school.

* Help create displays to promote maths within school.

* Meet with the maths lead regularly to improve the love of maths across school. 

The Maths Curriculum Intention

Through the maths curriculum we encourage perseverance, resilience and the understanding that in order to progress it is necessary to make mistakes along the way.

Pupils should learn about:

Number and place value, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, fractions and decimals, ratio and proportion, algebra, measurement, geometry and statistics.

• At St Joseph’s we follow the White Rose maths scheme in order to ensure a mastery approach to learning mathematics. We aim to develop a secure understanding of mathematical concepts which allows children to grow in confidence and gives them the tools to tackle more advanced mathematical problems.

• We feel that it is essential that the children develop a good understanding of mathematic fundamentals in order to make progress. We encourage the development of mental maths strategies in order to ensure an understanding of mathematical processes.

• We make time within the curriculum to frequently return to previous material via short, sharp sessions in order to ingrain mathematical methods and understanding.

• Once mathematical fundamentals are in place we endeavour to provide challenging tasks for our children that will develop independent and creative thinking around maths problems. All children partake and we encourage collaborative learning and lots of group discussion.

• We encourage the use of games and puzzles within maths lessons as we believe that they develop fluency and reasoning skills and , most importantly, make maths enjoyable and provide an environment in which children do not fear maths.

• We encourage a positive attitude towards learning in maths and instil a belief that attempting difficult questions and making mistakes will enhance progress. We believe that this develops both the skills and approach necessary for the children to continue to make progress in secondary school.

Mistakes in math are opportunities for students to learn. In fact, students learn the most math when they are “doing” math, not from an answer. When students do math they go from mistake to mistake making sense along the way. That is what we should be celebrating in math class- the process, because the process of doing math is the learning! Mistakes in math are an opportunity to develop curiosity and wonder. Mistakes in math allow students to think critically about their own work and others. There is nothing better than when students find their own mistakes. We like to create norms in our math classrooms where students are expected to check each other’s work and speak up when they disagree or don’t understand. This often leads to students pointing out where their peers have taken a wrong turn in solving. Then, together as a group we can uncover the mistake and correct it!