Cathedral School Calculation Policy

The school’s Calculation Policy is available below by operation and year group for ease of reading.

Please read the guidance below before helping your child with these written methods.

When helping children at home with written calculation methods it is important that your child is taught consistency with what they are learning in school. It is often the case that parents will try to teach the methods they were taught at school, but sometimes this can do more harm than good as their child might be learning a different approach in school.

The methods taught to children in Year 5 and 6 will be perhaps most familiar to parents. In the younger year groups, emphasis is given to methods that encourage understanding of place value so that children gain a robust mathematical understanding of what is happening throughout the calculation, rather than try to perform a rote learned recipe.

Our aim for all children in Cathedral School is that they become fluent in all four of the operations so that they can apply it within other areas of Maths. We deepen children’s understanding of key concepts through a new ‘Mastery’ approach to our lessons. The ‘White Rose’ scheme of learning is taught across the school, allowing pupils to spend longer on key mathematical concepts, most noticeably number. The children’s understanding is then deepened through reasoning questions where children are expected to explain their methods using mathematical language.

This is the vocabulary that will be used within your child’s learning.

Maths Vocabulary Years 1-3
Maths Vocabulary Years 4-6

We hope that you find the guidance helpful and supportive to your child’s education.

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