Resources for Core Maths
19 May 2020
Ruth Wroe, OCR Maths Subject Advisor
If your students are mid-way through a core maths course, it’s important to set them activities that can maintain and build their mathematical skills.
Although it will be difficult to replicate the same level of interest and engagement of a discussion-based lesson while they are working from home, it’s still possible to provide interesting context-based resources where students can apply their skills.
It will also be fruitful to dedicate some time to consolidating learning by setting skills-based activities too. So, if you are looking for some inspiration for interesting core maths resources that you can use for independent learning, look no further.
Core Maths teaching and learning resources
Mathematics Education Innovation (MEI) provides a wealth of core maths resources and contributed to the OCR Core Maths A and B (MEI) textbook. You can sign up for free access to the core maths resources on MEI’s Core Maths platform by registering with Advanced Mathematics Support Programme (AMSP). This site offers a comprehensive collection of lesson plans with associated student sheets and other materials. The resources include interactive home study materials and auto-marked assessments, to help with tracking and monitoring.
Once you have registered you can apply for their free individual student accounts, so they can then login to complete tests and you can track their progress.
AMSP has identified a number of websites where teachers can find core maths resources and they have some useful resources for students self-studying core maths.
They are also supporting teachers with a variety of online CPD provision throughout the academic year.
Catherine Van Saarloos, Core Maths Professional Development Lead for AMSP, has created a teaching padlet where she has curated a large list of core maths resources. It also includes useful links to a wide range of online support, including articles, quizzes, videos, radio programmes, books and events, plus a reminder to follow #coremaths on Twitter for useful updates.
Amongst the many resources flagged by Catherine, the following are worth a mention:
- The Desmos statistical tools twitter thread highlights the sorts of things that can be delivered using technology.
- (Quibans) has lots of useful items to provoke mathematical questioning for context-based learning. Questions inspired by a news story The Mark Dawes blog,
- The suggested questions that accompany the items require the students to interpret the quantities given in the text in order to carry out the required calculations.
- Lessons may need to be structured a little more when delivered remotely as students will not have the benefit of a classroom discussion.
- AMSP are providing some ‘Quibans live online’ CPD during their online festival.
- The reflectivemaths blog has some good support. The post ‘Bridging work for Core Maths – Year 11 into 12’ is a good example, outlining some introductory lesson ideas for prospective core maths students currently in Year 11 to help transition into Year 12.
- The core maths subject support from the University of Plymouth is pitched more at teachers, but some students will be able to work through the notes and examples independently and then attempt the questions whilst at home. Alternatively, the notes could be issued to students as supplementary reference material.
For skills-based lessons, a wealth of free materials and videos are available from Dr Frost Maths and Corbett Maths, reinforcing the underpinning GCSE skills that are applied in core maths.
OCR maths support
We have published free teaching resources for each of our core maths qualifications that you can download from the respective qualification pages.
Select ‘planning and teaching’ from the menu on the left to access teaching resources, including:
- Resource lists (located under planning) contain links to new and existing resources to help deliver the core maths specifications.
- Topic exploration packs, which contain teaching notes and a selection of activities for a particular topic. Each one is accompanied by student sheets and answers.
- Teaching activities, which are short activities and worksheets.
Selecting ‘assessment’ from the left-hand menu takes you to:
- Past papers and mark schemes – the most recent are locked for teacher access only, so you can use them as mock assessments.
- Examiner reports, which give details of how students performed on each past paper, including common student mistakes and misconceptions.
- Candidate exemplars, which expand on the detail given in the examiner’s reports.
- Sample question papers with mark schemes – additional practice papers are also hosted on the Core Maths platform.
Stay connected
If you have any other resources you’d like to share, tell us about them in the comment box below. We’ll also be regularly posting links to a variety of online resources in the coming weeks, so do follow us @OCR_Maths.
If you have any queries or questions, you may also find the answer in our FAQs or you can email us at maths@ocr.org.uk, call us on 01223 553998.
You can also sign up for email updates to receive information about resources and support.
About the author
Ruth has worked in the OCR Maths team since 2014. Before joining OCR, Ruth taught maths in the UK, New Zealand, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. Ruth worked on the development of the reformed A Level Maths qualifications for first teaching in 2017 and she is responsible for the support and promotion of OCR Core Maths qualifications.
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