Our post-16 GCSE Maths route map could hold the key to your learners success
A dip in confidence, prior negative experience and lack of relevance can be some of the challenges a teacher faces with GCSE Maths resit learners. Here, Julia Smith, a post-16 specialist and member of our panel of maths experts, tells us how passing these exams is beneficial for a student’s future, and how our post-16 GCSE Maths route map, authored by Julia, has 30 weeks of teaching resources to help you in your teaching.
Your learners have seen it all before when it comes to GCSE Maths – they’re resitters. It may be a while ago, it may be recent – but they’ll have already worked towards trying to gain a GCSE Grade 4. They know what they need to do, they just can’t do it all…yet.
Having led a department in a large FE College for many years and in my current role as a National Teacher Trainer, I’ve met with lots of teachers from a variety of settings in the post-16 arena. I know that resitters need a different ‘diet’ to what they’ve received before if they’re to have a better chance of being successful at Grade 4.
The post-16 GCSE Maths route map has been specifically designed for the teaching of resitters of the GCSE maths curriculum, based upon the principles of revision. It’ll help to support your teaching and delivery of this different approach.”
Guidance from awarding bodies is that ‘unless a learner is likely to gain a Grade 6 they should sit the Foundation Tier’. The route map is written for resitters of the Foundation tier.
If it looks, feels and sounds like the maths they’ve seen before, you’ll just get the same result
For a resit learner who achieves a Grade 4, it’s a significant achievement. It means they’ll never have to resit again, and they will benefit as it will enhance their CV – National Numeracy figures show that learners with a Grade 4 earn more money over their lifetime at work than someone without.
There are three main barriers to success in post-16 GCSE Maths resits; lack of confidence in their own ability; relevance to them in their own circumstances and previous negative learning experience. Acknowledging these issues and having a strategic plan to address them is perfectly possible.
A different ‘diet’ should tackle these barriers head-on to motivate and engage the resitters who have little confidence in their ability to pass, this time around. The route map delivers a revision-based approach with 30 weeks of suggested resources to help support your teaching.
Re-vision the maths to see it differently this time around
The 5Rs approach is at the heart of this route map and has been proven to benefit a wide range of resitting learners. It’s grounded in research and takes influence from a spiral curriculum that supports the Assessment Objectives. Each lesson has these essential five elements within it.
The 5Rs are:
Recall – the basics facts and knowledge
Routine – the 1 and 2 mark questions
Revise – one topic for up to 15 mins (no exam questions – just ‘what do we know?’)
Repeat – exam questions based on the revised topic
Ready? – exam technique
Practise, not until you can get it right, but until you cannot get it wrong
Learners should revisit topics many times to transfer detail from working to long-term memory. This may include elements such as times tables work, work on fractions or shoring up ratio skills. Encourage doing work outside of the classroom to maximise their chances of success, even to Grade 5.
You don’t need 100% in the exam for a Grade 4 or 5
The route map focuses on another important feature of the revision-year approach. Find out what they can do and strengthen that. Find out what they can sort of do so that they can do it. That’s enough to move someone from Grade 3 to Grade 4. Anything else is a bonus and may even take them to Grade 5.
Make the student the architect of their own learning
Seeing your class once a week for three hours, or twice a week for one and a half hours probably isn’t enough. Some providers may not even have the luxury of this time. Involving learners in the construction of their revision plan in a revision-year approach, and helping them to think about how they can learn outside of the classroom, will benefit their outcome.
The route map helps you do this by giving learners daily opportunities to revise and practise in their own time. This will help to re-engage your learners, involve them in the process of succeeding, make choices about they how they want to work, and what they will use to do it.
Most learners will say they’re revising when asked. What that actually means and looks like can be vague. The route map explores revision techniques - the what, the how, the when, the where and the who – to help learners take ownership of the resit.
If you can’t beat them, join them – TikTok, Instagram and YouTube
It won’t surprise you that many of your learners spend much time on online platforms such as YouTube, Tik Tok and Insta. They’ll have them on in the background while revising, taking frequent looks. By arming them with a myriad of online websites and YouTube channels, exploring different ways of working may engage them better. The route map helps do this by handing control to the learner using mechanisms that they’re very familiar with and stepping away from work they have seen before in a traditional way.
Fluency and the nine mathematical basics
50% of the GCSE Maths at Foundation level is based upon AO1 – these are the first two Rs in the 5Rs approach – recall and routine maths.
Building the nine mathematical basics will build a firm foundation in maths knowledge. The nine basics are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, percentages, scale and ratio.
There’ll be many benefits to strengthening these areas. Problem-solving and reasoning both depend upon mathematical fluency. The route map allows for plenty of mathematical fluency development and practise.
The 5Rs revision-year approach has been trialled with some year 11 learners who are destined for college or who struggle at Foundation Tier, to good effect. The route map has multiple opportunities to shore up and strengthen the basics through the first two Rs in our 5Rs routine – recall and routine.
The starting point isn’t that they know nothing
The revise part of the 5Rs within the route map is based upon the high-frequency topics; those that reappear every year. There are around 50 such topics and resitters may well know something about each topic. The Revise part of the route map looks at different ways of revising these key topics. Then the Repeat phase looks at two or three typical questions based on the revision.
The only way to get good at maths, is to do maths. Lots of maths
You can’t read about maths or look at a picture about maths…maths is a physical thing like football or knitting. You just have to do it, to get good at it.”
A little bit of maths every day will develop good habits – maybe only 10 minutes a day will have a big impact on the outcomes. The route map incorporates working through the holiday periods too. A little bit of maths every day, even in the holidays, will pay dividends.
Revision-year approach
Learners have seen all the maths before; it’s just that they can’t do it all. They’ve not done maths since their last exam in June. Revision means to look at it again…perhaps with a different lens…to re-vision the maths so that learners see the maths differently. Spend time addressing revision as a process. Within the route-map we consider these options with learners;
How can they revise?
What can they do or use to help them revise?
Where can they revise?
Who could they revise with? Who might support them or help?
When can they revise? – find 10-20 minutes every day
Why is revision key to their success? Remind them of the benefits of gaining that Grade 4 early on.
Exam technique
All learners, at all levels, can improve their outcomes by focusing on good exam techniques. The AQA document ‘Small things make a big difference’ (2.0 MB) will support this. Within this, a focus on the ‘command words’ of the questions would be useful too.
There are many clues to what learners do well, and not so well within the reports on the exam, so that’s another area for concentration.
The 5Rs revision-based approach will not capture all your learners but it may well inspire more learners than were previously engaged.
This route map will help you deliver a programme specifically suited to a resitting learner and support you in the delivery of a top-quality curriculum plan for success.”
Route map and 30 weeks of resources
Take a look at Julia’s route map and the 30 weeks of resources that will support you and your post-16 learners.
