Hello all

Year 11 Lessons

Please notice that the Similar Shapes lessons in the Year 11 Higher section of the website have been uploaded (again big thank you BWA Maths!) and I have uploaded a set of solving Simultaneous Equation revision lessons in the Year 11 Foundation section (although suitable for Higher revision too!).

I have been looking through results and trends from the last two years across our schools and have noticed that there appears to be a fairly consistent trend in achievement from End of Year 10 to Mock 1 for us all.

Here the orange line represents a progress trend from 2018 and the blue line represents a progress trend from last academic year. Essentially Mock 1 performance doesn’t appear to be as strong as the End of Year 10 Mock performance. Some of this dip in performance may, in part, be explained by tier decisions; some students may have done well on the Foundation tier so consequently entered for Higher tier for Mock 1 (and not done as well!). Perhaps this dip is also caused by the summer holiday and lack of retrieval over the summer holiday. Either way I’d be interested to hear your thoughts – what do you think causes this? What can we do to overcome it?

Year 7 Transition 

This week I have been looking through the Question Level Analysis for the current Year 7 cohort at BBA and found that approximately 50% of BBA students got this Paper 1 question wrong back in early May.

A criticism of our scheme of learning that I occasionally hear from colleagues, students and/or parents is that students have “done this before” or that “it is too easy”. Whilst it is true that our Year 7 curriculum does overlap with Year 6, it is important for us all to remember that although students will have been taught how to add fractions with different denominators in Primary this does mean that a) they can do it fluently, b) they understand the mathematics behind it and c) they can apply this knowledge and understanding to unfamiliar contexts.

I have created three Year 7 Addition & Subtraction Quizzes from recent KS2 Arithmetic Papers. Please either set these as homework or use them as your weekly quiz over the rest of the half term. My hope is that these will provide you with some insight into what your Year 7 students can accurately calculate from KS2.

Hope you all have a great week

Louise