Almighty God,

You hold the whole of creation in your hands,

Thank you for the hundredfold blessings,

Help us to multiply love and respect,

Share our talents, given to us by you, with others,

Add happiness and ideas and take away things that we have done wrong.

We grow together in God’s love,

In Jesus’ name,

Amen

At St Anne’s, we believe that children should experience the awe and wonder of mathematics as they learn to solve problems; develop ways of looking at patterns; discover efficient strategies and make links between the different areas of maths. We believe maths is a universal language; it helps us to describe, make sense, investigate, understand and respect our ever-changing world. We believe all children can achieve in mathematics, and teach for secure and deep understanding of concepts through fluency, reasoning and problem-solving. Where possible, we try to make our maths ‘real’, making our learning and experiences relevant to everyday life. We use mistakes and misconceptions as an essential part of learning and provide challenges through rich and varied problems. We encourage children to use approaches, which work for them, by equipping them with a range of efficient strategies and ensuring an understanding of them. At our school, the majority of children will be taught age-related content and will be supported in understanding this through using our ‘St Anne’s 5 a day’ adaptive teaching strategies.

We use White Rose Maths and Numicon.

Numicon are a system of flat plastic shapes with holes in them. Each shape represents a number from one to 10 and each number has its own colour.

Numicon can be used across EYFS, KS1, KS2, and to help bridge the gap to KS3. Numicon’s approach to teaching maths helps children to see connections between numbers, supporting children as they learn early maths skills in nursery, primary school, and beyond. It's a multi-sensory way of learning, which means children learn by seeing and feeling. This is great for kinaesthetic learners – children who learn by doing.

Physical resources like the colourful Numicon Shapes are an important part of Numicon. The holes in the Numicon Shapes represent the numbers 1 to 10. When they're arranged in order, as in the picture below, children can easily see connections between numbers, such as ‘one more’ or ‘one less’.

Here are just a few topics we use Numicon to teach:

• Patterns –You can use the different shapes, colours and numbers to create a wide variety of patterns to demonstrate to children, or even challenge them to create their own.
• Ordering –Numicon shapes can be used to demonstrate putting items in a sequence, such as from biggest to smallest or by numeric value.
• Counting –By counting the holes in each shape and comparing their sizes children can begin to understand the order that numbers should go in.
• Early Calculating –Numicon shapes are great for practising simple addition and subtraction sums. Using the shapes that represent each number in the sum you can add and take away as and when needed and allow children to count at their own pace.

By giving children something physical – rather than just paper and a pencil – they develop confidence and a greater understanding of the concepts that they are being introduced to. Numicon helps to raise achievement across all ability levels.

As children get older Numicon can be used to help explore and explain slightly more advanced topics such as:

• Number order;
• Place value;
• Patterns;
• Number bonds to 10;
• Addition and subtraction;
• Odd and even numbers.

More complex ideas that Numicon can be used to demonstrate include geometric shapes and symmetry. You can use the Numicon shapes to create patterns to show children and see if they can identify whether it is symmetrical or asymmetrical.

Numicon can also be effective when children begin to learn times tables as this can be a tricky topic. Numicon shapes can be used to help children visualise the times tables, understand the patterns that occur in them, and make them seem a little less daunting.