Best maths workbooks and resources

[lilacclementine]

DS is in year 7 in a selective school. He was considered extremely good at maths in his local primary school but he's finding the pace and content very different now.

He started in top set (out of 7) based on initial altitude tests but has since moved down a set to the second where he's happier. Having said that a lot of the work I see him coming home with seems to be at a year 9/ GCSE level (whenever he looks something up for homework in BBC bite size it's always seems to be a few years more advanced) so I accept they are stretching them.

Anyway of his sister's friends (a very talented mathematician in year 13) volunteered to do a bit of work with him- going over things he's done or not understood in class etc. However she's suggested that it would help if they had some actual questions to work through and I was wondering if there were any books or resources people could recommend that could give them work they could do?

I know this seems mad but he's got a specific ambition in life for which he will need very good maths results. The top 2 sets in the school do a much faster and more advanced curriculum. They all end up with 9s at GCSE and do GCSE further maths and DS wants to stay in this cohort. This was his suggestion- I'm not forcing this on him!

We home schooled my son at this age and found the CGP books excellent. You can buy a work book as well to correspond with the revision book and it gives you an answer booklet as well. Also Pearson books are pretty good too.

I bought them off Amazon, not mega expensive either.

CGP workbooks are generally good for questions you want questions to work through, CGP workbooks are generally good [[https://www.amazon.co.uk/KS3-Maths-Workbook-answers-Higher/dp/1841460389/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1FDAFL1PEJW3M&keywords=CGP+maths+KS3&qid=1678126139&sprefix=cgp+maths+ks3%2Caps%2C77&sr=8-3

Worth remembering that there is no different 'GCSE syllabus' for maths, the maths GCSE syllabus covers maths going all the way back to primary school, so he'll have been working on GCSE maths topics for a long time now.

www.amazon.co.uk/KS3-Maths-Workbook-answers-Higher/dp/1841460389/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1FDAFL1PEJW3M&keywords=CGP+maths+KS3&qid=1678126139&sprefix=cgp+maths+ks3%2Caps%2C77&sr=8-3

I love the humble books and blue publishing selection.

Have a look at Numerise. It's Yr 6 upwards, has practice modules but also videos to teach methods.

We did a two week trial and then signed up for £60 for a year.

We use the following at home for DD (also year 7) -

1. Complete Mathematics for Cambridge IGCSE Extended by David Rayner. I wouldn't worry about the board at this stage in case your son's school is using a different board because there is a very large overlap. We like this because the book has large number of problems on each topic (50 or more) ranging from straight forward to more difficult. There is succint description and examples for each topic before the exercises. Here is the Amazon link amzn.eu/d/8zRgZ5Z
2. Before that book, I was using past GCSE papers and picking out specific questions from topics we were interested in. This is obviously more work than above and I had to spend more time selecting suitable questions (and working out the answer when DD was stuck!), but I felt it was worthwhile because there are more stretch problems in the papers than in many other books. Again, wasn't fussed about the board and I was using OCR simply because they had more free papers! Here is the link revisionmaths.com/gcse-maths/gcse-maths-past-papers/ocr-gcse-maths-past-papers
3. Lastly, we use (less frequently) the UK Mathematics Trust past papers (many in their website, you can also buy their books). They are a superb resource, the problems are much more unusual, fascinating, and harder. Some of them really stalls DD and sometimes me too! For what it is worth, I don't think UKMT questions are particularly valuable for GCSE exams, but if your DS enjoys maths and has some time to spare, they can build resilience and new ways of thinking about maths problems. Also useful of course if your DS has plans to participate in UKMT junior challenges. UKMT also has a twitter account that posts a weekly problem to solve and a solution next week. They are fun and most are accessible to a motivated year 7. twitter.com/UKMathsTrust

@lilacclementine
I know this seems mad but he's got a specific ambition in life for which he will need very good maths results

Just out of interest, do you mind sharing what he has in mind? Always interested to learn what keen young mathematicians are thinking.
(It's perfectly fine though if you feel uncomfortable sharing to strangers on the interenet!)

sorry, the UKMT twitter link got messed up due to a line break

This is the correct one twitter.com/UKMathsTrust

This is really helpful thank you. Will look into these.

We had the first session with DDs friend and she said he's really really good but she can see why he has blips. There's an assumption in the class that they will have a solid grounding in the basics already and his junior school doesn't seem to have provided that. He also gets distracted and doesn't see the need to show working which was fine in junior school but less useful now. She's going to make him practice. A lot!

In answer to your question he's interested in doing visual effects for the cinema - you need a combination of computing, maths and art (he's a wonderful artist which is a bit of a niche combination).

There's an interesting article here.
plus.maths.org/content/career-interview-visual-effects-director-#honey

He's also interested in architecture as another choice- things where he can combine art with maths/ computing. He's taught himself quite a lot of coding and is just busily exploring things that interest him.

Thanks. Have signed up for the trial.

Thank you. They're ordered!

Thank you. Haven't come across it before, combining computing, maths and art. Fascinating and a good find!

Some of game programming is also like this, but game programming is a hard career.

Check out drfrostmaths as you can set the topic and difficulty level. It really helped DD who was in a very similar situation to your son. The Dr Frost website is free and you can customise everything, choose specific topics, number of questions, difficulty level and so forth.