Embedded Files
In order for students to achieve their desired grade in maths they must revise little and often.
The amount of content in the GCSE maths paper requires them to constantly revisit a variety of topics to ensure everything is remembered well and that they are familiar with how to apply their knowledge and skills in exam questions.
Students should be doing about five hours of maths revision a week in the run up to exams, this time needs to be effective. Targeting weak topics is essential because answering the questions on these topics will increase grades. Revision should largely consist of exam style questions and pupils should seek support on any they find difficult.
Students sit AQA Linear Maths: Their tier of entry will be decided later in the Autumn term and both students and parents will know whether they are sitting the foundation or higher paper. The foundation paper has a maximum achievable grade of 5.
For both tiers, there is one non-calculator and two calculator papers.
Extra support provided in school
Exam Paper Society – We host a weekly session after school where students can come and practice exam questions with there friends and have Maths teachers on hand to support. This session is very popular with students.
Some students will also be invited to a number of after school sessions that we do from around January. This is on top of the support they will receive from their classroom teacher.
Past Papers
All students will be part of the Exam Paper Society classroom whether they attend the sessions or not. As a result, they will all get access to one past paper per week. This can be completed by students in addition to their Maths homework. As we move closer to the exam’s teachers may direct students to complete this alongside their homework as a compulsory task. Students can come up to the Maths Department at any time and request further past papers.
Maths Revision Resources
Maths Revision Resources
Sparx Maths: This is an excellent interactive website which we subscribe to for Ponteland High School students. They will use this for homework and it can also be used for independent learning or revision. It combines an instructional video with personalised tasks to target weak areas. Teachers can set students tasks, direct students to tasks or students can identify tasks themselves to support their revision. They should always use a pen and paper when using the site for essential working out. Teachers then receive feedback about how the student is doing and therefore can tailor intervention more appropriately.
First Class Maths – First Class Maths is an incredibly important website for year 11 students. It has all the past papers available on the website as well as information about which topics occur on tests most frequently. They also have questions based on specific areas which provide more targeted practice, this is also the case for any students doing Further Maths. Once the Exam period begins First Class Maths will produce “predicted papers” which uses the information they have about previous exams to predict what may come up in future exams. This is not an exact science but can help students prioritise where to focus their revision.
Corbett Maths – Corbett Maths is another website that can be very useful in year 11. It requires no log in and has videos for all topic areas. Corbett Maths also provided students with a series called “100 days to go.” This series gives pupils a short revision session on each of the 100 days prior to the GCSE exam.
Maths Genie – Another free website that pupils appreciate is Maths Genie. This has exam questions on all topic areas and these are graded so pupils have more idea about the difficulty of the work and can target key grades.
Revision Guides and Workbooks: Some Year 11 students have purchased these already and they are an excellent resource – so do use these for practice and re-learning. If students have not yet purchased these and would like to then they should ask their maths teacher to order some for them
Page updated
Report abuse