Maths Year 10 Revision

[SuperAntsInvasion]

Dd is revising for her year 10 mocks, she's made flash cards for the formula that she thinks she needs to learn ( so quadratic equation, circles, compound measures and things like that)

But are there any thing that children should make sure they are solid on rather than just the big topics? She was thinking things like long division, fractions. Any other ideas please?

All the basics: Methods for + - x /, Fractions, Percentages, Decimals, unit conversions, working with negative numbers, time tables & factorising.

Also know how to use her calculator.

Also, it is all very well knowing SOH-CAH-TOA or 'minus b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac all over 2a' but you have to practice applying it too.

Thank you I will mention the calculator to her especially as I'm not sure she has though of that.

It's really strange as she is great with the more tricky stuff but will make a silly mistake, like getting 8 x 7 wrong in her calculations, so she's working on that too.

They have to learn the quadratic formula!! That's harsh, it's far more important that they know how to use it instead of it being a memory test.

It's strange. You spend ages telling your DC not to reach for the calculator and to use mental/written methods so they get things embedded, but then for GCSE there is a calculator paper and you are desperate for them to use it so as not to screw up trivial things.

The main screw up with a calculator tends to be when doing means as if they don't use brackets for the adding then when they divide BODMAS will jump into action and give them the wrong answer.

NB her maths exam might be a non-calculator one.

I think for maths, it's important to use that formula to solve questions than just remembering the formula. You will learn the formula while doing so.

DrDre The quadratic formula is quite high up, grade 7. I don't know whether they need to know it by heart, I think so but could be wrong.

The quadratic equation is on the AQA list of formulas not provided I believe. I hadn't even heard of it before she started doing it

It just seems pointless having to remember it, but that's just me. I guess it's one of the things Gove brought in. They should be testing the ability to use it, not their memory.

With maths, the best revision is doing lots of questions, not just reading flashcards. It's quite different to some other subjects in that respect. So yes, get those formulae learnt, but then plough through questions.

I agree about the calculator. I once tutored a child who only actually brought her calculator to our very last session. It was a nice new model, and when she needed to find the square root of 3 as a decimal, it told her it was sqrt(3); there's a button to press to get the decimal, but she didn't know where that was.

She's made sure that she's always had the same calculator as the one the school suggests so that she knows where the different functions are luckily.

She's doing past papers and using maths watch for videos which helps any topics that she's not sure of.

The laws of indicies she wasn't great at remembering so she has been writing those down lots

The laws of indicies she wasn't great at remembering so she has been writing those down lots

That's the kind of thing I where I personally think understanding the basics means you don't have to remember 'laws', you can just do it.

4^3 = 4x4x4
4^2 = 4x4
So 43x42 = 4x4x4 x 4x4 = 4^5 , you add the indices. But if you understand what it is all about you don't need to learn it as a law, it's just obvious.

Sorry, possibly not helpful.