We’re coming up to a vitally important time now for Year 11 students, where the last 5 years of their education is coming to a head, and their final exams are on the horizon.
Revision is probably well underway already for most subjects, but students can find it hard to figure out how to revise maths effectively and efficiently.
Over the next few weeks, we will be outlining a tried and tested system for revising maths effectively, which parents can help their child implement without spending a penny. We know this system works as its what our tutors use with their students every year, helping them achieve some great results. This system should help students work smarter, making better use of the time that they put into their revision
Stage one – Assessing current strengths and weaknesses
Maths is a wide ranging subject, with hundreds of topics tested on the GCSE, which are all interlinked. It may sound a bit backwards, but in our experience, without the right intervention, students tend to revise their strengths a lot more than their weaknesses. Areas of weakness make them feel uncomfortable and inadequate, so they tend to avoid these and instead, reinforce their knowledge of topics they are already reasonably confident in. Over time, this leads to big gaps in knowledge which just don’t get addressed.
Students can also be unaware of the weighting of each topic in their exams, making it hard to know which topics are the most important. Foundation tier focuses on ratio, proportion and “real life” maths, whereas higher tier is far more Algebra focused, working students towards the skills they need to take Maths & Science further at A-Level. Revision time should be tailored accordingly.
So how can students assess their current knowledge?
For a full, in depth analysis of strengths and weaknesses, students should use a set of past papers or mock papers, which are freely available online. These don’t need to be completed in exam conditions, students could just go through the questions and give them a RAG rating; Green if they are very confident in the question, amber if they are a bit unsure, or red if they have no clue. Over the course of a set of 3 papers, every topic from the syllabus will be tested, so students should get a really comprehensive revision list from this. They may also notice that they struggle with particular question types. Questions where students have to explain their mathematical working, or analyse the work of others, can be troublesome, as well as the “problem solving” questions, which may use multiple branches of maths in one question.
At Total Maths Tutoring, we offer a free mock marking service, where one of our expert tutors will mark a student’s mock exam for free and provide them with their top three topics for revision. Please contact us if you’d like to take advantage of this service
Completing a whole set of papers may seem a bit overwhelming at first, so if you want to help your child get the ball rolling, why not get them to try our free GCSE quick assessment tool
This multiple choice quiz should only take 15 minutes and is designed to quickly assess students’ knowledge on the key topics for their tier, giving them a good starting point.
Higher tier quiz https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSevGWAlqTCxBRlGCrunOaGewCoKkvwsqBqeeSJJp7j8mT9RKQ/viewform?usp=header
Foundation tier quiz
Once they complete the quiz, one of our tutors will provide them feedback and some topics to start their revision, free of charge
The next blog in this series will look into using these assessments to guide their study, as well as looking at some of the most efficient and effective ways to revise.
