Tag Archives: revision

316. What should I revise?

Hands up all those who have challenged an underperforming teenager and got any of the following replies:

“I’ll do it with my tutor”

“Why aren’t we revising <unrealistic topic>?”

“It’s okay, I’ve got a tutor”

“It doesn’t matter what I do in class, I’ll do it with X”

“I don’t need to revise fractions (even though they can’t do them)”

“My tutor says this work is too easy for me”

“I don’t want to revise solving equations, I can’t do them”

“I’ve been doing cosine rule with my tutor (not even on the tier they are doing)”

“I’ve never done this (yes, you have but you talked through it every time we did it)”

“My mum says my tutor says I should be doing Higher”

“My tutor wants past papers”

Now don’t get me wrong, I know some amazing tutors – they know their maths, they are up to date with curriculum changes and they make a real difference. I also teach amazing kids who try their best all the time.

What really irritates me is the students who use tutors as an excuse for laziness and the tutors who teach complex topics but fail to reinforce the basics. So to combat this issue I’ve put together this PowerPoint – it got the message through to the students I was worried about in Year 11.

What should you revise (ppt)

What should you revise (pptx)

314. Maths is a foreign language 

If I had £1 for every time I heard ‘I don’t get it!’, I could probably buy a new (modestly sized) car. That phrase is banned in my classroom. What does ‘get’ mean? What is ‘it’? Did you actually read the question?

And there we have it: reading the question.

Today’s little life skill strategy can work for all levels of literacy – because you don’t need any! I’ve taught a lot of students who just shut down when they see wordy questions and don’t look at the big picture – literally. There can be a really obvious diagram and they will skip the question. They just don’t try!

Now as you may be aware, I’m based in Wales in the UK. For those outside the UK, Wales is a principality within Great Britain. Although everyone speaks english, the traditional mother tongue is welsh – it’s particularly spoken in the North/West of the country. If you attend a welsh language school, you can do all your exams in welsh. A GCSE is called a TGAU.

But why am I telling you this?

Well, this means that the WJEC/CBAC exam board publishes their exam papers in welsh and english. Identical papers, different languages. I teach over the border in England, where only one or two students per year can speak welsh. This is where it gets interesting …

I went through a welsh language ‘Mathemateg’ paper and picked out the questions which involved diagrams – I also picked out the matching English questions so I was clear on the questions (not a native welsh speaker, just a learner). I gave my GCSE class the Welsh questions and told them to figure out what was going on. After the initial disbelief they had a really good go at the questions. Their comments included:

‘Well, it’s obvious it’s a tally chart’ 


‘Just fill in the table with the numbers from the pattern’


‘That’s got to be a special type of triangle’ (answer isn’t correct, but idea was)


‘Just use angles in a triangle to work it out’


I was impressed – they were constructively arguing about questions and covering diagrams in good maths. When we went over the questions they were telling me how easy it was, yet the week before they’d skipped questions like the angle problem in an assessment! I explained why I’d done it and told them they didn’t need to keep the worksheets as I’d made my point. I was stunned by the number of students who wanted to take them home to show their parents – they were proud of their problem solving – 16 year olds wanting to show off their Maths skills!

This idea can be used with any bilingual exam board or any language that you speak that the students don’t. It’s a good tool for getting over ‘question blindness ‘ and literacy confidence issues too.

These are the exam papers I used:

WJEC GCSE Maths 

CBAC TGAU Mathemateg

If you look at the web addresses there is one digit difference to differentiate between the languages, meaning if you go on the WJEC english language website you can find the welsh equivalent by swapping a 0 for a 5 in the second to last digit.

312. Class Commentary

I don’t know about you, but going over higher level questions (eg A-Level) after a test can be a frustrating time. The students never seem to fully engage because they think they know it all – even though they do get things wrong! What if I could offer you a way to review the test and incorporate an understanding of exam board mark schemes?

Image credit: www.sri.com

Preparation

  • When you mark the test clearly indicate on the paper which questions students got fully correct.
  • Alternatively get your students to do this.

Set Up

  • List the question numbers on the board
  • Starting with the highest number (usually the hardest questions) students volunteer to answer the questions on the board by putting their name next to a question number. In this way the brightest students who got the tricky questions right can’t volunteer to do the easier questions, allowing other students a chance of success.
  • Long multi-part questions could have more than one student.
  • You can also allocate a calculation checker and algebra checker if you have spare students

Task

  • Bring up each student to go through a question on the board.
  • Whilst they do this you can do a commentary of where marks are allocated by the markscheme, alternative methods and misconceptions.

I did this activity with a Year 12 group whilst reviewing an A-Level paper and it was a such a better use of time. The students were more engaged and I could interact with the class on a much more productive level.

304. S1 Revision Clock

If you are a regular on Twitter you may have seen some of the many revision clocks being shared. Basically 12 questions, 5 minutes each. Students can revise up to twelve different skills, under timed conditions, hence improving exam technique. My favourites are from the lovely Mel & Jo (@just_maths & @mathsjem). Not to be confused with Mel & Sue! (Random British humour/baking reference).

teaching_wall_clock_cafepressImage credit: www.cafepress.co.uk

  • Mel’s blog post on revision clocks can be found here: Just Maths
  • Jo’s collection of revision clock resources can be found here: Resourceaholic
  • Don’t skip these links – they are good!

Now I used one of the C2 revision clocks with Y12. It was an eye-opener: some students were excellent at managing their time, some rushed the questions and wanted to move on (hence not checking their work and making daft avoidable mistakes like they have all year!), others gradually improved their time efficiency and a few ignored the time constraint and sat stuck on one question, when there were so many other questions they could have excelled at. Constructive feedback all round!

So I decided that we would do the same for Statistics. I put together a set of questions from Edexcel testbase – full credit to them is given on the sheets. They challenged my students due to the need for accuracy in calculations and the sheer laziness of not wanting to look up formulae. If you want to do the same, just download the resources here:

S1 revision clock (pdf)

S1 revision clock Answers (pdf)

You will also need to print the answer sheet onto A3: Answer sheet courtesy of JustMaths

297. Crabby Functions

I take no credit for this ‘aide-memoire’ – it comes from a most delightful and hardworking student. To quote a colleague “She is the poster-child for the benefits hard work”.

Let’s call this student Natasha (not even close to her real name). Natasha had been struggling to work out the difference between graph/function transformations, in particular f(x+a) and f(x)+a. Which way did the graph move? How could you tell? Then she had a brain wave:
image

She drew little Y shapes on the brackets:
image

One of the brackets now looks like a little crab:
image

And we all know crabs move sideways – so it most be a horizontal translation!
image

Simple!

Logical!

Genius!

Thank you Natasha!

289. The secret formula for success

You may remember this advert for Frosties cereal (US Frosted Flakes) from your childhood. If you do you’ve been around as long as me:

What was Tony’s secret formula? We never found out!

Enough reminiscing I hear you cry! How does this help anyone?

Well, in the new GCSE exam specifications the formulae sheets have gone. Specific formulae may be given in an individual question, but due to the lack of a working crystal ball we don’t know the frequency with which this will happen. To help with this I have typed up the Edexcel formulae into a PowerPoint. You can print it out and put it around the room, you could have a formula of the week, you could leave a slideshow running while students work, you could even print it small on card and make a pack of flashcards. Mine are laminated and hanging from a washing line, I’m going to move them around so that students have a varied view.

Whatever you do, increased familiarity improves retention – just think back to the posters you regularly saw as a child. I have made different versions for different situations – Edexcel vs no exam board, white background vs pale blue background, pdf vs pptx. Download whichever version you need:

Edexcel No Formulae Sheet blue (pptx)

Edexcel No Formulae sheet wihite (pptx)

Edexcel No Formulae Sheet blue (pdf)

Edexcel No Formulae Sheet white (pdf)

GCSE No Formulae Sheet blue (pptx)

GCSE No Formulae Sheet white (pptx)

GCSE No Formulae Sheet blue (pdf)

GCSE No Formulae Sheet white (pdf)

261. Revision Egg Hunt

It’s beginning to look a lot like Easter … scrawny plastic chicks and over-priced chocolate eggs everywhere! This little ‘egg’ of an idea was totally inspired by some lovely Tweeters who mentioned ways to use empty plastic eggs.

image

Equipment
I bought these two-part plastic eggs from a local craft shop. They are available from lots of places on the high street and online. My pack has 30 eggs in six different colours. You may be able to see that I’ve numbered the top and bottom of each shell – just to avoid arguments.

Activity
Now, I used these eggs for revision with my GCSE class. Each colour represents a different topic. There are 30 questions and the answers are the numbers 1 to 30. I hid the eggs in our main hall due to the unpredictable nature of the British weather. You could hide them inside or outside the classroom and give a prize to the person/group who correctly completes the most questions. Points could be deducted for trying to sabotage other groups. If you don’t feel that adventurous or it’s impossible to go outside, you could copy the questions and do this as a desktop activity.

Topics
Sometimes we get tunnel-vision on the focus for passing exams. We keep the ‘fun’ stuff for younger pupils. This revision activity is a treat for my hard-working students in KS4. They aren’t the easiest of topics, but they are perfect for students working at GCSE grade C and above.

1-5 Expanding & factorising quadratics
6-10  Ratio & Proportion
11-15  Straight line graphs (y=mx+c)
16-20  Simultaneous Equations
21-25  Shape problems
26-30 Factors & Multiples

Resource
You can download the questions here: Easter revision 30Q
You can download the solution here: Easter revision 30Q Solutions

Feedback
I was surprised to get feedback from this activity from a form teacher, who said their students had arrived at registration bouncing and saying how much they had enjoyed the lesson!