These topic lists are taken from the AQA 8300 spec and re-written in language that, hopefully, students can fully understand. The Higher one lists all topics on the spec, with the Higher topics in bold, the Foundation one lists all the Foundation topics only. I’ll be giving these to my year 11 students to help with revision and give them the security of knowing what they should know as they approach their exam, and there are tick boxes alongside each topic. I’ll also be using it myself as reference. Please feel free to comment, or let me know of anything that you might find is missing or incorrect, but I think it’s a fairly thorough job; it took long enough to write!

A picture to complete, colour in, learn, cut out, etc. to help with the bits of the syllabus that just have to be learnt. My pupils are doing Edexcel but equally useful for any foundation syllabus.

This list of content is aimed at pupils, to show them what the new topics, extra to the AQA GCSE, that they’ll need for their Level 2 Further Maths. Our pupils study the Further Maths alongside their GCSE work in year 11, so this will hopefully make it easier for them to see just what is required. It will also help me plan. It does require Word with Equations to show the full details.

I’ve used the Two Minute Times Table Challenge for a good few years now with years 7 upwards, every Monday. They love the challenge and seeing their upward progress. I time them on my phone, then they swap to mark each others (some of the younger ones love to read out the answers), and I keep a record of their scores. Same questions each week, or as one of my pupils once said when she realised it’s always the same, “So all we have to do is memorise them?”. Yes, I said, that’s all you have to do. The first score of the year is always pretty poor, but after that I start rewarding credits each time they get to the next multiple of 5 or above. The challenge is then to improve their own score; they’re more keen to know if they’ve beaten their personal best than how their score compares to anyone else’s. This carries on till about year 9 with higher groups, or year 11 with lower sets, and if they ever manage to score 100 their reward is a bag of sweets the first time they do it. I’m introducing the new challenge - the beast - this year for those that have already reached 100 and want a new challenge. I’m also going to get them to keep their own score on a ready-made graph that they’ll stick in their book at the start of September. All good fun.

This is the script for our class assembly (year 9) in which Red Riding Hood is a Vsco girl (ask a teenager if you don’t know what that means!) and Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg trying to give Grandma advice on whether to sell her house to developers. Nice and short, but all good fun.