St Werburgh's & St Columba's 
Maths
"Without mathematics, there's nothing you can do. Everything around you is the mathematics. Everything around you is numbers."
Shakuntala Devi
What is the vision for Mathematics in our school?
At St Werburgh's & St Columba's Primary School, Mathematics is seen as a creative and highly inter-connected discipline that has been developed over centuries, providing the solution to some of history’s most intriguing problems. We recognise that it is essential to everyday life, critical to science, technology and engineering, and necessary for financial literacy and most forms of employment. We aim to give our children a high-quality mathematics education whoch provides a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics, and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject.
What does our Mathematics curriculum offer to our pupils?
At St Werburgh's & St Columba's 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.
What effect does our Mathematics curriculum have on our children?
At St Werburgh’s & St Columba’s Catholic Primary School, we are Mathematicians and we want our children to love maths! We want them to have no limits to their ambitions and to grow up wanting to be accountants, data engineers, statisticians and aerospace engineers! When our children leave us to take their next step in the world, we want them to be curious learners with a thirst for learning who are prepared for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. Through a varied and inspiring curriculum, we aim to develop the children’s problem solving, resilience and reflective skills – skills that are easily transferable across the curriculum and useful in everyday life.
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Keystage 1
In Years 1 and 2 we use Maths No Problem to enable children to master maths skills. It is based on the research and lesson approaches used in Singapore. This programme is taught through a daily Maths lesson and builds the children’s problem-solving and reasoning skills alongside their number skills. The children in KS1 also take part in a daily 'Mastering Number' session designed to develop their mental maths skills and fluency.
At the bottom of the page you will find some useful information on how a Maths lesson is structured and the program of study for Year 1 and Year 2.
Keystage 2
We use White Rose’s scheme of learning to provide KS2 with a yearly overview for each year group and termly overviews which show the objectives to be covered in each topic. However, this scheme is adapted continuously during the teaching and learning cycle to ensure it best fits the learning needs of our children. As well as having a strong emphasis on developing children who are fluent and confident in their use of number and arithmetic, we also strive to give our children the opportunity to develop their skills in reasoning and problem solving in each lesson to deepen their learning and to enable them to become resilient, critical thinkers.