Welcome

Numeracy

Mathematics teaches us how to make sense of the world around us, through developing a child's ability to calculate, to reason and to solve problems. It enables children to understand and appreciate relationships and patterns in both number and space within their everyday lives.

At Whittington we aim to:-

encourage an enjoyment and enthusiasm for learning through practical activity, exploration and discussion; we believe that maths should be FUN!
build confidence and a competence with numbers and the number system;
develop the ability to solve problems through decision-making, reasoning and logical approaches
to develop a practical understanding of the ways in which information is gathered and presented;
to explore features of shape and space, and develop measuring skills in a range of contexts;
to understand the importance of mathematics in everyday life.

Teaching and learning styles

The school uses a variety of teaching and learning styles in mathematics lessons, following the structure laid out in the National Numeracy Strategy. We use the Abacus scheme and other resources throughout the school.

Our daily lessons have:-

objectives which are shared with the children.
a lively mental/oral starter.
interaction with children, encouraging them to ask as well as answer a variety of mathematical questions.
a range of visual and/or practical resources to aid clear explanation and understanding.
regular recall and reinforcement of number facts.
a range of mathematical vocabulary, regularly used, explained and reinforced.
a high proportion of direct teaching to a whole-class and/or group which is pitched at an appropriate level.
opportunities for children to work individually, in pairs or in groups.

Organisation

Children are taught in Numeracy sets from years 1-6.

In years 2/1 and 3/4 there are 3 sets - some of which are mixed age.

In years 6/5 there are 4 sets- 2 in each year.

Parental Support

We welcome support from parents and aim to keep them well informed about their child's targets. Each term we send out a parents' booklet with targets and games to support learning. Click here to see the targets.

This term we ran a very successful 'workshop' for parents to help them to understand how methods have changed in numeracy. Thanks to Elisabeth Huggett for providing a very entertaining and enjoyable evening and thanks to the parents who supported the event. If you missed it you can download it and view at your leisure. Click here.

Over the last 2 terms we have run very successful Maths Clubs in years 2/1, 3/4 and 6/5. We invited parents to join their children in listening to stories with a mathematical theme and playing numeracy games. We're not sure who learned more- the parents or the children- but everyone had fun!

Thanks to funding from our Maths clubs we now have a range of big books which we use in KS1 Numeracy lessons, and we also have sets of Maths games suitable for Foundation upto Y6. Y2/1 are using their games packs to start a Numeracy Lending Library and KS2 use their games as part of Numeracy lessons.