19/12/18

Hello!

Year 10 Common Assessment

Thank you for all of your work getting these assessments completed and marked in time for the deadline today. I have calculated the Year 10 CAF grade boundaries to be as follows:

  • Grade 9 : 46 (out of 50)
  • Grade 8 : 40
  • Grade 7 : 34
  • Grade 6 : 29
  • Grade 5 : 24
  • Grade 4 : 16
  • Grade 3 : 12
  • Grade 2 : 09
  • Grade 1: 03

You will see the grade boundaries on G4S change to reflect these over the next few days.

Foundation or Higher ?

As our scheme of learning continues to be developed into Year 10 there have been a few questions about whether certain concepts should be taught to certain groups of students that we anticipate will do Foundation tier at the end of Year 11. Essentially my answer is yes, absolutely!

For the vast majority of students tier decisions will not (and should not) be made at this stage in Year 10 and we should be enabling all students to access as much of the Maths curriculum as possible until an informed decision has been made. In addition to this I cannot think of any Mathematical concept in the current GCSE Maths curriculum that wouldn’t be beneficial in some way for any student to be learning about! For example, using the Cosine Rule is not assessed on the Foundation tier but substituting into formulae definitely is. Drawing Trigonometric Graphs is not a foundation topic but using a calculator and plotting coordinates is. Finding the equation of a tangent is not on the Foundation tier but knowing what a tangent is and being able to calculate the equation of a straight line is. I could go on! The challenge we face is ensuring that our lessons are planned well enough to enable all students to access them. Some lessons will require a number of preparatory lessons beforehand for certain classes. If you would like any help with this please get in touch or speak with your Head of Maths and do continue to share with me and each other scaffolding activities you have used.

ChristMaths

It has been lovely to see lots of different ChristMaths competitions at BWA this last week. Here are a few of the entries they had for a ChristMaths Mathscot:

On that note, I shall wish you all a Merry Christmas! Hope you all have a fantastic break and I look forward to seeing you all next year.

Louise