The subject lead for maths at Darwen St James is Mrs Heald.
Maths Curriculum
At Darwen St James we use the White Rose Maths scheme to support our planning and teaching of Maths throughout school. White Rose Maths is a scheme that has been developed by a team of passionate maths teaching experts who are influenced, inspired and informed by the work of leading maths researchers and practitioners across the world. The scheme's fundamental belief is that 'everyone can do Maths', and it is designed to teach to the 'mastery' of concepts so pupils become confident and resilient mathematicians.
We are also proud users of Times Tables Rock Stars.
In either paper form or online, Times Tables Rock Stars is a carefully sequenced programme of daily times tables practice.
Each week concentrates on a different times table, with a recommended consolidation week for rehearsing the tables that have recently been practised every third week or so.
This format has very successfully boosted times tables recall speed for hundreds of thousands of pupils over the last 8 years in over 16,000 schools - both primary and secondary - worldwide.
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Why White Rose?
The reasons we chose the White Rose Maths Primary Scheme of Learning can be summarised by the following points:
- It provides a powerful CPA approach (concrete, pictoral, then abstract) including in its use of models and images, which helps secure pupils understanding of mathematics and to make connections between different representations.
- There is a great emphasis on mathematical language, questioning, explaining, reasoning and problem solving. This allows pupils to discuss the mathematics they are doing, support each other to take ideas further, and develop a broad and secure understanding.
- It provides a connected, progressive curriculum, aiding the development of carefully sequenced lessons, (See more below on progression within the scheme).
- It develops the skills of teachers, without interfering with professional judgement by being over prescriptive.
- The curriculum is designed to use skills that have already been learnt in different contexts (sometimes called ‘interleaving’) whenever possible. This helps pupils to remember and to make connections between different parts of the curriculum.
- It combines the best of both ‘mastery’ and ‘spiral’ approaches in the curriculum. It follows many of the mastery principles – spending longer on topics to help gain deeper understanding, making connections, keeping the class working together on the same topic and a fundamental belief that, through effort, all pupils are capable of understanding, doing and improving at mathematics. But also recognising that just spending a good chunk of time on a topic doesn’t mean that all pupils will ‘master’ it the first time they see it, and that they need to see it again and again in different contexts and in different years to help them truly develop their understanding on their journey to mastery, so we’ve built in the revisiting and reinforcing features of spiral curricula too.
- It is a curriculum that is ambitious and that works for all, with everybody studying the same topic and being provided with support and challenge as needed. Many of the teaching strategies we advocate for all pupils are particularly useful for pupils with SEND. See more on how the scheme supports those with SEND below
Meet the characters-
Our class of characters bring the schemes to life, and will be sure to engage learners of all ages and abilities. Follow the children and their class pet, Tiny the tortoise, as they explore new mathematical concepts and ideas.
Symbols
White Rose symbols included in the schemes of learning-
The new KS1 symbols.
Click here to download posters that describe each symbol.
Nursery
This half term, the children have been developing their shape knowledge, playing bingo shape games and creating Buckingham Palace with shape cut outs. We created patterns on underpants for our alien topic and used size language using planets and rockets.
Reception
In maths, Reception has been matching die frames to ways of making 5, exploring ways of representing numbers within 5 using 10-frames and making links between different representations of numbers within 5.
Year 1
In maths, Year 1 has been learning about finding a half and a quarter of shapes and quantities. They have had fun folding shapes and finding a half and a quarter. They have also been sharing objects between four to find a quarter.
Year 2
In Year 2, we have been learning how to tell the time: we have been looking at o’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past. We have also enjoyed learning about tally charts, tables and pictograms.
Year 3
Year 3 has been looking at time starting with an analogue clock and then moving onto digital. At first the children found time tricky but they all persevered and felt very proud when they could tell me the time at certain points in the day.
Year 4
In maths, we have been learning all about fractions. We have learnt lots of new words eg: Numerators, denominators, improper fractions, mixed numbers, equivalent fractions. We have been doing all kinds of things with fractions, eg: comparing fractions, converting fractions, solving problems with fractions and finally adding and subtracting fractions!
Year 5
Year 6
Year 6 have spent the half term revising and consolidating all the maths they’ve learnt in readiness for the SATS tests… they have done lots of reasoning and arithmetic practice!
Nursery
This half term the children have been developing their understanding on positional language, placing the pirate in different spots around the ship, using language in front, behind, on top and next to. We have also created patterns with different shapes and beach items to make a repeating pattern.
Reception
Reception have been consolidating their learning this half term, ordering numbers from 1-20, discussing odd and even numbers, exploring number bonds to 10 and looking at addition and subtraction.
Year 1
Year 1 have been learning about place value to 100. We have used tens and ones to make a variety of numbers. We have been comparing those numbers using greater and less than signs.
Year 2
Our unit this half term has been measurement. We have been learning about mass, capacity and temperature. We have learnt lots of new vocabulary and enjoyed using the practical equipment to introduce these new topics.
Year 4
This half term we have been learning about turns and angles and we have been finding angles, especially right angles everywhere! We have been using the terms clockwise and anti clockwise, alongside left and right and also learning that there are 360 degrees in a full turn of a circle. We enjoyed giving each other instructions how to move. We looked at decimals and linked the work with the fraction work that we completed last half term. We have looked at shapes and perimeter too. We also completed our multiplication check and we are all very proud with our times table journey, as we have all worked incredibly hard and have made excellent progress with our times tables.
Year 5
In Year 5 we have been finishing off our white rose units. We have looked at position and direction, and negative numbers. We have explored translation and reflection using lots of different methods, and even had a go at drawing our own graphs for translation in our books- it as tricky but we still had a go! In our negative number work we have been calculating the difference between negative and positive numbers, using both mental methods and number lines.
Year 6
This term Year 6 have completed a maths project called ‘Tours’ from White Rose Maths. This was based on real life uses of maths, and was focused on going on holiday. As part of this project we have used our maths skills in different contexts, such as climate and temperature graphs; converting imperial and metric measurements; working out airport costs including parking costs; thinking about cost of accommodation including self-catering, half-board or all-inclusive; converting money using exchange rates; and finally calculating time differences around the world.
Pre school
Pre school this half term the children have been developing their number language, counting fingers and joining in with calender. The children have been building to make structures making houses for the bears to live in. We have also explored shapes, making shape birthday cakes and houses.
Reception
Reception class have been learning how to subitise this half term. We have been using our fingers to represent different numbers and learning how to count one object at a time, knowing our stopping number.
Year 1
Year 1 have been learning about place value within 10. We have been counting objects, including counting objects from a larger group. We have also been looking at 1 more and 1 less than a number and comparing groups, focusing on more and fewer then moving on to greater than, less than and equals to. Year 1 have also been learning about 2D and 3D shapes. We have made 2D shapes using lolly sticks and counting the corners. We have also explored the properties of 3D shapes by stacking and arranging them.
Year 2
Year 2 have been learning about place value to 100. We have been partitioning numbers and ordering. Also we have been learning to use the <, > and =.
Year 3
This half term we have been looking at place value to 1000. We have been partitioning numbers using base 10 and place value charts. We have also been finding 1, 10 and 100 more or less than a given number and using our knowledge to complete number lines.
Year 4
We started the term looking at place value, rounding numbers and Roman Numerals. We then moved on to addition and subtraction using the formal written method using memorable poems and correct mathematical vocabulary before using different checking strategies on our work.
Year 5
At the start of the term, Year 5 looked at Place Value, understanding numbers up to 1000000. Then moving to being able to add and subtract using these numbers. We also looked at round numbers to 1000000 and comparing numbers. After Place Value we moved onto calculation using addition and subtraction.
Year 6
Year 6 began this school year learning about Place Value and Number, with a focus on numbers over 1 million, rounding and estimating, and negative numbers. We then moved onto addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. These pictures show Year 6 using cubes to create arrays to help us explore common factors.
Year 1
Year 1 have been working really hard on different skills during our Mastering number sessions. We started the sessions by looking at subitising numbers, where the children look at a group of objects and recognise the number without having to count. We then looked at different ways to make 5 and used the cubes to help us with this before moving on to learning that numbers 6-10 are ‘5 and a bit’. We used different resources including the dice frames and rekenreks to help, focusing on ‘one push’.
Year 2
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