Maths mock help please!

Totally agree with @PostNotInHaste, Ds is at sixth form studying maths, further maths, physics (massive overlap with maths) and computer science.

He absolutely loves maths. And yes, half the timetable is maths for him. He isn't doing an EPQ as the sixth form don't recommend it for his choice of subjects and where he sees himself university wise.

But he pulled himself up by the boot straps to get to where he did maths wise because he lacked confidence which only came out by the end of year 9. He worked incredibly hard doing maths problems daily and achieved a 9 very comfortably. But you have to want it and apply yourself.

We’ve been around 6 sixth forms this year and one of the most helpful comments was from a Maths teacher at one where FM Is a fourth subject. DS asked about it and she said if you take FM then half your timetable is Maths and you have to really love it. Was really helpful as made DS clarify his thinking on what he enjoys and what he wants.

Sounds sensible to have other ideas at this point and review as things go on.

I agree with the comments above that practising questions from papers is really important. Here you can search for questions by topic:

justmaths.co.uk/2015/12/21/9-1-exam-questions-by-topic-higher-tier/

I also like Hegarty maths. However in order to decide where to focus my son’s efforts I decided he needed supervision. I managed to find a maths teacher who my son actually likes. His teacher at school is terrible! There are so many companies to choose from in London but we found our maths tutor Dmitri vía Renaissance Tutors:

www.renaissancetutors.com/

Don’t worry, there is still plenty time until the exams :)

I think it’s it’s just about getting his head down and doing more maths tbh but would agree that further maths A level would be a big ask for someone currently at 5/6 level.
Dc got a 7 in year 10 maths mock and an 8 in yr 11 mock. Their predicted grade for gcse in the summer was an 8 and they scraped a 9 . They were told by a teacher who they respected at the start of year 11 that “ you can’t revise it- you get better by doing it” and this turned out to be excellent advice for dc. They worked their socks off using past papers / videos and getting more papers and one-off tricky questions from teachers
They are now doing A level maths which they are enjoying and working hard at but it is by no means easy for them. Further maths wasn’t even considered as they do not see themselves in that league.

Key word there is apparently.

What are these predictions even used for?

I can guarantee the teacher will not be measured from their own predictions. Accountability doesn't work like that. The school (and sometimes teacher) will be "judged" by the progress the class have made since their year 6 SATS. If she's lucky she'll be "judged" on the progress they have made in the time she has taught them.

@Teachermaths yes the school doesn't predict 9s. But the teacher has apparently predicted most of the class the same grade they got on a past paper in May in year 10.

I have known a few kids like this. Liked Maths because they were good at it without having to put any effort into it. It was easy they never did much studying for it but they always got good marks and generous praise.
Around 16yo the exams start, the questions are harder than they are used to and they just haven't put the hard slog of practise practise practise in. They scrape a good mark and go on to A-level.

But they never liked Maths for the actual mathematics and now the subject is really hard. They really aren't equipped to get their heads down and do some serious number crunching and 2 years later they do really badly.

If there isn't a real turn around before the GCSE I would rethink Maths A-Level. Just scrapping a 7 with parents and teachers screaming at him to revise isn't going to work. He actually needs to show that he likes studying the subject, not be forced to.

As for Further Maths, its out of his league.

@witchend To be fair to the teacher, predicting 9s isn't done in most schools. This is because the grade 9 is allocated using the following formula:

Percentage of those achieving at least a grade 7 who will be awarded a grade 9 = 7% + 0.5 × (percentage of students awarded grade 7 and above)

Predicted grades are pretty irrelevant anyway.

As always nobles advice is fab. He needs to work harder is probably what it boils down to.

Sorry, posted too soon. I think I would be going to the school and asking if they really think he should be up 2/3 grades by the summer, and is that usual for their pupils.
They'll probably either say he under performed (in which case query that's happened twice) or say yes. In which case you have the perfect opportunity in asking how they are going to support him to get that grade.

I would agree with noblegiraffe.
Dd got a high 7 in May year 10, which was a past paper when they hadn't covered some of the topics that came up and her teacher has still only predicted her a 7/8. (I have strong suspicions the teacher is trying to make herself look better by under predicting though)
She's exactly like your description: doesn't bother writing anything down and careless especially when easy, and I doubt she did any revision at all, but a natural mathematician.

Dd got an 8 last summer.

Agree that past papers are really important with maths. Google "GCSE Maths past paper" plus the exam board After he's done a paper he needs to mark it using the mark scheme.

Dd started with a list of topics and divided them into green (confident) amber (ok) red (difficult) She focused on getting better at the red topics rather than revising everything.

I also helped her with exam technique For example at the end of the exam there is often a difficult vectors question worth a lot of marks. In her November mocks Dd would see that it was hard and skip the question but by January mocks had learned that these questions often had 1 or 2 marks that were easy to get so she would make sure she got them.

noblegiraffe
To quote DD ‘oooh this looks good’!
Thank you for the link.

Hmmmmmmmm.

My gut feeling is that a student who get got a 5+ in Y10 and a 6 in Y11 mocks isn’t a natural candidate for Further maths. The Y10 result suggests the Y11 one wasn’t a bad day.

The most likely progression from mocks to the real thing IME is to go up a grade. Some students stay on the same grade. Some (rarely) go up 2 grades, with considerable effort, the ones I know who’ve done it have had tutors. (That’s assuming a totally normal Y11).
Normal progression would put him on a grade 7. Enough for A-level, but probably not heading for the top grades, not enough for Further maths.

I think based on what DS says, it's mainly careless errors and failing to write down his workings. His ability is definitely there as he tends to get the harder questions right

I don’t think this can be true. A grade 6 on Edexcel last year would have been between 45% and 57%. That’s a significant amount of careless errors. Not writing your working isn’t penalised unless you get the wrong answer, unless the question specifically asks for your reasoning. Either he isn’t as good at maths as he previously thought, or he has seriously slacked off on revision and doesn’t know his stuff.

Getting the papers back and looking at them thoroughly will be key. Once he has identified questions that he really should have got but didn’t, he needs to work on those topics.

There have been some good links above - Corbettmaths has got videos on every possible topic as well as the 5 a day questions.

www.piximaths.co.uk/revision-booklets these revision booklets are arranged by topic - they tend towards the more difficult, so I would suggest ‘grade 7’ rather than ‘grade 9’!

He needs to know that maths revision isn’t the same as other subjects. No mind maps, writing notes, highlighting. He needs to do lots of questions.

I wouldn’t start with papers right away, I would do topic-focused revision.
Pick a topic
Watch a video/read revision guide and work through examples with guidance
Do some questions on the same topic
Check the answers
If he got any wrong, try to figure out why.
Fix the questions he got wrong
Go back and do some more questions and get them right
Pick a new topic and start again.

They need to do way more questions than they think. Not until they can get them right, but until they can’t get them wrong.

Once he has mastered his weak topics, then he can start doing more general practice.

Do you think OP that you DS has chosen his A Levels base don subjects he feels he should do? This is sometimes/often an issue with maths, English and the sciences.

Maths often attracts the 'he's always been so good at it' types. But , as for any A Level, it helps if there is a drive, a curiosity and a desire. If he is already doing better in other subjects, might he be better suited to those beyond GCSE?

Nowt wrong with a 6 at GCSE in any subject but if he is getting higher grades in others, I can't help wondering why you wouldn't go with your strongest suits.

www.physicsandmathstutor.com/past-papers/gcse-maths/

I don't think the situation is 'so bad', nor do I see any evidence that this is any more than a DS who is lazy in revision and lazy in writing down method in exam. Sounds like it could be quite easily rectified to me?

If he would like lots of questions around individual maths topics then the Dr Frost Full coverage papers are pretty good.

If it would encourage your son, being able to do maths well without writing down much working is to my mind a good marker of someone with good mathematical ability. Writing down your working efficiently and effectively is an important skill you need to learn in order to take that mathematical ability to the next level. It can also be used as part of your strategy to eliminate silly mistakes.

Both my children have had to focus on these skills in order to do well in maths (eldest just started A level, younger one yr 10 and I've already had words about sciences … exam technique will be key there, not understanding the work). Find work he can practice, and insist he aims for 100% on that work - talk through with him, what went wrong, where did that mistake come from. Learning the skills of getting easier material completely correct quickly and efficiently should make a big difference for him, and will be important preparation for A level work.

Hope you can get it sorted out. To be honest I would be questioning the school as to how this situation has been allowed to get so bad, though.

it's mainly careless errors and failing to write down his workings. His ability is definitely there as he tends to get the harder questions right. It's the simpler stuff he messes up on?!

My DD was like that, she did a lot of practice papers closer to the exams.
I'm pretty sure it's not unusual for kids like this to significantly improve their grades from what they're getting at this point in the year, both for gcse and A levels.

Re silly mistakes, obviously 'show your working' mitigates against losing all the marks. Some types of question it's possible to quickly assess whether the answer seems ballpark reasonable in terms of sign or order of magnitude.

@namechangenumber2 - extremepapers.com
I think this is for IGCSE - we live overseas, but it should help with the practice of key topics.