Just a quick post … OK … I’m sat shaking my head as I know that it’s just not going to be the case …

So this evening I thought I had better do some “actual” lesson planning and so I jumped onto the Edexcel emporium – there are other exam boards available and I do try my best to be fair to them all so I have some posts coming up looking at what resources the others have to offer. I did say some months ago that the one of the deciding factors will be the support given to teachers when it comes to making the decision as to which board to go with. Anyway I have just lost a couple of hours of my life (thanks Graham and Mark!!). If you don’t know about the emporium (where have you been?) go to www.edexcelmaths.com and register for an account.

emporium 0

There are so many good resources apart from the schemes of work and past papers/ mark schemes you’d expect for all levels of Maths assessments but I thought I’d give you a whistle-stop tour of the new 9-1 GCSE stuff that I particularly like, but if you have a “rummage” in the drawers you will find some golden nuggets (ooh er Missus!) of your own.

There are 2 and 3 year schemes of work which are word documents that mean you can adapt them for your own use (I like that idea!) and I also like the fact that there are hyperlinks throughout the documents taking you back to the indexes etc (the smallest things make me happy!). In terms of usability I like them – they’re simple, with a list of statements that I need to teach students (I have my SOWs in a folder and tick topics off … sooooo “old skool” but works for me!) and they also follow the Pearson text-book which I managed to get Seager (tightest person I know … think “ducks ar5e!”) to buy each of us 1 copy of the Higher and 1 copy of the Foundation book. As a Department we just don’t have the £2000 – £3000 it would cost us to buy new text books … and if I’m honest he has a point about never using them anyway – in our last school they spent £1000’s (and I mean mega bucks!) buying each classroom an almost complete set of the old Graduated Assessment textbooks (if you know them there were books for “modules” 1/2, 3/4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9/10 so I had 4 shelves full of them) and 6 years later most of them had never even been opened in some of the rooms … apart from cover work! Key Stage 3 is different though and I do think we need to start thinking about what we do for years 7 and 8 .. any recommendations/donations (ideally but unlikely!) would be gratefully received. OH BALLS … I didn’t mean to write about textbooks!!

Anyway, back to Graham’s “drawers”. There are some Bronze, Silver and Gold problem solving papers (there are now two sets of these and no doubt shortly after the publication of the next set of specimen papers (which I think are due out shortly ) Graham will do some more … no pressure Graham, but you know if I say it that it “has” to happen now?). These are a genius idea! The papers are made up of questions from the recent SAMs that have three versions:

  • Gold – the questions as they are on the SAMs;
  • Silver – some scaffolding to assist students;
  • Bronze – questions are broken down into multi steps.

I like these papers a lot so much so I’m going to say it again .. I LIKE THESE PAPERS A LOT!!!

The idea of students having a “frame of reference” whereby they can work up from Bronze, to Silver and then to Gold over time through the same questions with some sense of familiarity is great. It also fits in well will my philosophy of regularly revisiting topics. After all, when most of us are “problem solving” we do refer to a body of knowledge and similar situations/questions we have seen before to help us. The extra thing that Graham has done is to split them even further than the previous set (which were split Higher and Foundation) so that there are papers aimed at grades 1-3, 4-5, 5-6 and 6-9. (Oh and of course there are some worked solutions … the handwriting does look vaguely familiar though and all the papers and worked solutions can be downloaded as a zip file too to save time). To give you an idea the below shows the same question from each of the 3 levels of paper (left to right = Gold, Silver, Bronze).

bronze silver gold

In the Support Materials and Tests cabinet there is a folder called “worksheets for schemes of work” which has a selection of worksheets that can be used for specific topics within each unit on the scheme of work and in the same cabinet there are a shed load (it’s a measurement of “stuff” in my world) of assessments for the schemes of work and these look really good too – I love the way the assessments and resources all link to the 2 or 3 year schemes of work … easy and clear for this simple gal. To be honest I’m not sure we’ll use the tests as termly assessments because they can’t be graded (that’s a different argument) but they will make great half-term and holiday homework.

I also came across an “access to foundation – scheme of work” and supporting “diagnostic document” to support those lower attaining students. I can see this being particularly important given that the first cohort going through could be, in my opinion, disadvantaged as they are the “gap” generation. I’m not going to bore you about how they haven’t been subject to the new key stages at 1, 2 and 3 that “feed” into the new GCSE, which is why checking prior knowledge throughout your teaching is going to be a key thing to be looking for.

Seriously if you haven’t had a rummage … do it! Do it .. NOW!

emporium 2