Mathematics

Fostering a love for maths

SOLID ACADEMIC BASE

With a strong focus on mathematics education, Saint Pierre de Chaillot provides students with a solid foundation and helps them develop essential mathematical skills, such as:

  • mastery of arithmetic and the meaning of the 4 operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division)

  • mental arithmetic
  • problem-solving
  • understanding of mathematical concepts
  • the ability to think abstractly.

THE IMPORTANCE OF MENTAL ARITHMETIC

The daily practice of mental arithmetic is of paramount importance to us at Saint-Pierre de Chaillot. It reinforces mastery of numbers and operations, enabling the acquisition of automatisms and the progressive memorization of results.

The daily use of the Japanese abacus, known as SOROBAN, in all our classes from kindergarten through to CM2, is a great help to students in this practice of mental arithmetic. Beyond the satisfaction of solving complex operations, it promotes the development of essential cognitive skills such as concentration, memory, problem-solving and logical thinking.

GEOMETRY

Introduced at a very early age, students really begin to delve into the subject in Cycle 3. From CM1 onwards, pupils learn to reason about geometric figures by learning their properties. In CM1 and CM2, particular attention is paid to figure drawing and mathematical demonstrations.

EVALUATION

Students are regularly assessed in mathematics. Assessments enable us to measure students’ skills, monitor their progress and identify areas for improvement. They contribute to the close monitoring of students’ learning and enable teachers to provide tailored, personalized teaching to help them succeed in mathematics.

ADVICE FOR PARENTS

At school, the teacher is careful to link learning mathematics with other subjects: geography gives an idea of very great distances, history requires a sense of time, and PE provides an opportunity to measure distances with a long jump or durations with a stopwatch…

Everyday situations are also solicited by the teacher (playground area, volume of water in a bathtub, division of a cake…).

You, too, can use everyday situations with your child to help familiarize him or her with mathematics.

Tips to help your child

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Shopping, measuring ingredients for cooking, counting cutlery to set the table, sharing a cake, etc. Encouraging your child to tell you when and how he or she uses mathematics in everyday life will help him or her become familiar with it.
You, too, can use everyday situations with your child to help familiarize him or her with mathematics.

It helps if your child can explain or describe the situation as he or she understands it.

He may need to use words, drawings or objects to help him find a solution.

Your child gains self-confidence when praised after solving a problem or understanding something new. Recognizing his work and efforts is gratifying for him.

Some games are better suited to stimulating logic, reasoning and memorizing addition and multiplication tables. You can even play with him as he learns, to show him that math can be fun too.

It’s normal and even desirable for your child to do so, so that he or she can progress. Mistakes can be seen as opportunities to teach your child something new.

It’s very important that your child knows his or her addition and multiplication tables.

They are essential to your child’s success in mathematics. In fact, they are the basis for the development of many other mathematical concepts: estimation, area, volume, mental arithmetic, multiplication, division of large numbers and many others….

Use games, riddles, nursery rhymes and poems to help your child learn the tables. Daily training to be widely encouraged.

The more comfortable your child is with his or her tables, the less difficulty he or she will have with math.

TO FIND OUT MORE…

If you’re not comfortable helping your child with math exercises, or if you’re struggling to explain them, there are many educational videos on Canopé (French national education website: https://lesfondamentaux.reseau-canope.fr/discipline/mathematiques) that can help you.