From their earliest days at Sacred Heart, children will acquire mathematical concepts that are based in real life situations through sorting, matching, making patterns and problem-solving. Many of these will involve children playing, exploring and investigating, doing and observing, talking and listening, and asking and answering questions. In doing this, they will be investigating size, weight, capacity, length, number, shape, pattern and order.
The importance of language is central to our numeracy teaching at all levels and children are encouraged to talk about their work and their findings. They are introduced to mental maths activities from Year 1 onwards and these form part of each and every maths lesson within the school. As the children progress throught the school, they become more and more aware of how mathematics can be used right across the curriculum, for example, recording outcomes in science or accurate measuring in technology.
- Investigative Maths is an important element of all numeracy work across the school and this involves children being given open-ended problems to solve. These activities are very popular among the children and are usually geared towards 'group' rahter than 'individual' work.
- Technology is also used where appropriate to support and encourage learning - we make effective use of online resources such as Alta Maths and MyMaths.co.uk, and children also use their knowledge of angles and rotation to carry out increasingly complex computer programming using Scratch.