Numeracy

Numeracy is everywhere. We use it in every aspect of our lives.
At St. John Bosco we understand the importance of numeracy in lives and place it at the centre of our teaching. As the digital age marches forward all of our staff place a premium on developing numeracy skills. We have a wealth of interventions: form time activities, competitions and a strong focus on using numeracy in all subjects to ensure that numeracy is embedded across the curriculum.

Our Mission

We always want to win the fight against poor numeracy and we want our students to love maths and know how important it is to them. We would never accept as a society if a child said they cannot read – in the same way we can’t accept it if a child struggles with the numeracy skills they need for the world that lies ahead.

Celebration

We like to celebrate maths in and out of lessons. When there is an opportunity for making the most of a celebration we take it. This includes in-lesson projects and competitions, whole school quizzes and lunch time games – here are some of the numeracy-focussed days that we promote and take part in every year:

• Liverpool Maths Party Day (September)

• NSPCC Number day (February)

• Pi Day (March)

• National Numeracy Day (May)

We have also had much greater involvement in the UKMT maths challenges which offer opportunities to all students to embrace the challenge and problem-solving side of numeracy. These take place:

• Senior (year 12/13) in October

• Intermediate (year 9-11) in January

• Junior (7/8) in May

As part of a reward scheme we take participating students on school trips – including attending the Liverpool Breakout Escape rooms which proved a wonderful experience.

Subject Crossover

We like to collaborate between departments to get the most out of numeracy across the curriculum. For example, the maths and science departments work closely throughout the year to align our curriculums, and help each other plan lessons that evidence subject links. At the end of the academic year we love to project plan – e.g. a Science based experiment that is followed by data analysis in the maths classroom.

We also work closely between departments to ensure that numeracy is felt daily across subjects, whether it is developing statistical skills in geography, understanding the concept of measure in P.E. lessons or getting involved in textile lessons when we need to work out the area of material needed for a new design.

Primary Schools

We are lucky to work with excellent local primary schools. The relationships we have are strong and growing. This allows us to share good numeracy and maths ideas. These help improve our teaching of numeracy as there is a healthy crossover of knowledge required for students to develop their skills in both settings. We invite primary year 5 students in several times in the academic year to explore interesting numeracy themes and we love to develop the passion for number that we have here at St John Bosco.

Liverpool Counts Quality Mark

We are immensely proud to hold the ‘Liverpool Counts Quality Mark – GOLD Award’ 

This recognises our continuing mission to:

• To raise the profile of Numeracy.

• To change the culture of thinking around Numeracy.

• To make real-life connections with Numeracy.

• To understand how Numeracy can affect life choices.

• To connect with other subjects.

• To share and celebrate the enjoyment of Numeracy.