Hello Maths,

The Friday bulletin is back after a short break. I was intending to write one last weekend while I was on the revision weekend with Beechdale year 11’s but I was having way too much fun. No, really! The weekend was organised to give students who don’t usually have a good space to work at home the opportunity fill the weekend before their exams with lots of good quality revision. They did 13 hours of maths and English in total, and lots of relaxing outdoor activities too. The kids have come back buzzing, if a little tired.

So, our exams are now well under way with C1 and Core Maths done this week. As well as C2, we obviously have our first glimpse of the new GCSE this week. The rumours are that the AQA practices sets 3 and 4 are the most similar to the actual paper as they were written alongside it. I know my class are hoping it’s not too much like practice set 4! Imagine opening up the first paper and seeing this as the first question…

They actually much preferred the last question on the paper:

They have finally realised that the new papers are not like the old ones. They can attempt questions all the way through the paper, not just the supposedly easier questions at the beginning.

The schemes of work for Summer 1 for years 7 and 8 are now complete.  There won’t be any more lessons added before half term, so if you have lessons left over, please use the time to recap content form the start of the year in preparation for the end of year assessments. I will start to upload Summer 2 lessons over the next week. The Summer 2 topics will not be covered in assessments.

You may have seen on social media that Maths teachers around the country will be celebrating Malcolm Swan day on Tuesday to mark his funeral which takes place on Tuesday.  If you do any activities with your classes, please can you send me photos so that I can send them to his colleagues, who will be sharing the tributes with Malcolm’s family. If you use Twitter and you want to share them on there too, the hashtag is #malcolmswanday.  A fitting tribute, I’m sure you agree.