The topic for week 9 is number - Factors, multiples and primes , Indices/powers and standard form

There are only a few areas of maths in this topic and this will allow review time for the first number topic or catch up in other areas.All boards have regular questions involving factors, multiples, primes and powers.Often the factor and multiple questions or set with a problem solving nature.It is important that pupils can work out the factors of numbers to 100 and understand how to find simple HCFs and LCMs

Although these tend to be towards the end of the papers there are questions involving simple standard form and also some questions at a more challenging level.This may be an area of ‘harder’ maths to teach pupils to gain extra marks or to avoid for those who are struggling.

The majority of the questions involving Number 2 topics appear on the non-calculator paper.

The topic for week 10 is number - Ratio, Ratio and Proportion problems, Geometric proportion problems

With the introduction of the new series of GCSE papers the questions on Ratio and Proportion have become VERY important as they represent a large amount of the marks.Students really do need to be able to answer basic ratio questions as they appear regularly on all papers, that is both the non-calculator and the calculator paper.There are many marks for these questions and most of the examination sets of papers have had at least 3 questions on basic ratio, although some of these questions are in a context.

The proportion questions are often around a recipe requiring a proportional increase in the ingredients to make a larger number of cakes.The geometric proportional questions based on similar triangles and rectangles tend to be rather difficult and are often the overlap questions with the higher tier.