Numeracy Skills Checks - KS3 Numeracy Program to complement White Rose Maths SOL and allow students to review their learning on Sparx Maths. This resource has been created with a view to improving students’ numeracy and Mathematics outcomes across my school from September. The Numeracy Skills Checks assess students’ basic numeracy skills and strategies and complement the White Rose Maths schemes of learning in KS3. There are 6 Numeracy Skills Checks for each Year Group 7-9 (one for each half term), 18 altogether across all 3 year groups. Each Year Groups’ Numeracy Skills Checks come complete with answers in a separate document. There is then a Student Review Sheet outlining each topic covered for each Numeracy Skills Check, linked to the Sparx Maths Independent Learning tasks. I have then added a Tracker spreadsheet that will automatically colour code students results based on their scores/confidence rating. There’s a document outlining the logistics of running the Numeracy Skills Checks with tips to get the program running in your Mathematics department and a poster to be printed and displayed in classrooms/corridor displays to raise the profile of the Numeracy Skills Checks.

This is a nice activity to get students using BIDMAS. The activity involves students being given a calculation on entering your classroom - print and cut out slides 4-7. The students answer the question (using BIDMAS) to find the location of their seat for the lesson. Each seat in the class will need to be numbered before the lesson - Print slides 8-39. You can give certain students certain questions to ensure they are sat in certain seats. Then, once they've found their seat they should attempt the rest of the questions where the answers are the numbers between 1-32. The great thing about this task is that students often get the answers wrong and you end up getting 2 or more students thinking they are in the same seat, hence discussion occurs as to who is correct! They can then use each other to answer the questions on the worksheet! All answers included.