Maths

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 be a mixture of learning key facts and practising exam style questions.

Students sit AQA Linear Maths (LINK): 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

Morning Revision Sessions

In previous years we have held morning revision sessions after February half term. In normal circumstances there would be two compulsory revision sessions for year 11 students per week. These are half an hour long allowing focussed and quick work on key areas to prepare with teacher support available when needed. These sessions begin at 8:45 (15 mins before the normal school day starts).

These sessions have proven to have a large impact on student retention of key knowledge and skills.

Past Papers

From Christmas, every student will be given one paper a fortnight to complete. Teachers mark these and provide feedback. For the student these are an essential part of revision. For these to be useful, students must devote sufficient time to them.

If there is a question a student cannot do then they must not ignore it. By going to the effort of looking up the topic and working out how to tackle the problem, students will be well equipped to tackle a similar problem in their real exam. If past papers highlight a weak topic then this topic should become a priority for revision.

Maths Revision Resources

Revision cards: These contain key facts that students must know in order to get the grade they want. These should be learnt over time and frequent testing on these key facts is very helpful for students’ retrieval. Cards will be available on Google Classroom. If they would rather have them on card, students can purchase these for a small printing fee.

Hegarty Maths (LINK): This is an excellent interactive website which we subscribe to for Ponteland High School students. It should 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. If a student scores poorly on a task they need to slowly go through the revision lesson video one step at a time and make notes about the key points. 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.

Key Question Booklets: These are booklets with examples of key questions that often make the difference between certain grades. These are accompanied by worksheets with similar questions. Students attempt the sheets and when they are stuck they look in their example booklet for help. By the time they are doing the last sheet, they should no longer need to look up anything.

Diagnostic Questions: Depending on when the exam dates are set for, students will have a 100 day countdown available to them. They can download the diagnostic questions app (Eedi) for free, join their class, and they will be sent two random multiple choice questions a day for whichever tier they are sitting. The strength of these questions are that they target and identify common misconceptions the students may have, and alert both the student and teacher to these therefore allowing them to be rectified ahead of the real exam.

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.