Maths
Foundation Stage Maths in St Edmund’s and St Thomas’
Research shows young children engage spontaneously with maths during nearly half the time available for free play.
In St Edmund’s and St Thomas’ Foundation stage children are encouraged from an early age to develop a positive attitude to maths and not be afraid to make a mistake.
Staff help children to explore, experiment and discover. Repeating maths activities helps develop their understanding of mathematical concepts. Children will begin to understand regular daily routines, like snack time and going-home time, and how to use numbers to describe things.
Staff in St Edmund’s and St Thomas’ encourage children to use numbers ‘in context’, using numbers in practice, not just in theory. This deepens their understanding. Children can then apply their knowledge and experiment. They can test their new understanding of maths by using numbers in context through the day in real-life situations.
Our children develop their own working theories by using numbers in everyday contexts. They learn to communicate these to others and over time remember mathematical concepts.
Maths is used for counting and quantities, but children need to develop the other ways numbers are used. For example, for measurements, putting things in order and understanding values.
Our staff will always look for meaningful maths opportunities to aid learning and progress over time, seizing opportunities to use maths content in all the other areas of learning.
In Nursery, pupils will look at the numbers 0-5 in great detail. They will use various representations and be immersed in the number for a length of time.
In reception, pupils follow the NCETM’s daily Mastering Number Program. This is aimed at strengthening the understanding of number, and fluency with number facts, among children in the first three years of mainstream school.
As their continuous provision, Reception staff use the White Rose Maths and other complementary resources to embed the idea of maths in the ‘wider world’.
Correct vocabulary and reasoning sentences are planned and modelled consistently by all staff.
