St Gregory's

Vocabulary

Spoken Language

The national curriculum for mathematics reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. The quality and variety of language that pupils hear and speak are key factors in developing their mathematical vocabulary and presenting a mathematical justification, argument or proof. They must be assisted in making their thinking clear to themselves as well as others and teachers should ensure that pupils build secure foundations by using discussion to probe and remedy their misconceptions.

Maths is its own language. Sometimes that language looks like written words and sometimes it looks like symbols, but it is a language and it must be learned for maths fluency and confidence. If a child does not have a good understanding of key mathematical vocabulary, it can hold back their progress in maths
and in other areas of the curriculum.  At St Gregory's Catholic Academy, we explicitly teach maths vocabulary, giving it context and allowing children to apply it in a variety of problems, alongside our use of Numicon to make number relationships concrete.

The links below provide a list of mathematical vocabulary that we use for each year group.