Kicking off Year 12

Following on from my last post on ideas for the first Year 7 lesson of the year, here's some ideas for the start of Year 12.

Unfortunately we don't really have any time to spare in our sixth form teaching. It's a challenge just to fit enough lessons into the school year to cover all the course material before our students go off to take their exams. So, sadly, there's no time for enrichment or getting to know each other - students have to hit the ground running.

Entry Assessment
At my school, as at many others, we ask our students to prepare for Year 12 by doing some summer work. We expect them to have a solid understanding of GCSE topics when they start the course, particularly surds, indices and algebra. Last year, for the first time, we introduced a Year 12 entry assessment. The purpose of the entry assessment was to help us identify the students who needed additional support from the start of the course. We also hoped it would identify any students who shouldn't be taking AS maths at all, in the hope that they might consider choosing an alternative course.

Extract from Year 12 Entry Assessment

The results from our entry assessments were rather worrying. A large number of the cohort got less than 50% even though the majority achieved a grade A* at GCSE. The simple question 'Calculate 238 x 6.3' was answered very badly, showing a lack of basic maths skills.

I had a huge amount of students come to my extra support sessions - I believe the entry assessment was a good 'wake up call' for them. It motivated these students to focus and work hard right from the start. All students improved their mark considerably in the subsequent re-test, but still some of the marks were quite low. On A level results day in a few weeks I'll be really interested to compare AS grades achieved to performance in the entry assessment last September.

Here's the files in case you want to borrow them:

• Year 12 Entry Assessment   (answers) 
• Feedback sheet  (students who did well got a 'welcome to AS Maths' message!)
• Year 12 Entry Assessment re-test 

Student Handbooks

We hand out student handbooks to every Year 12 in the first lesson of the year. They're asked to keep these in the front of their maths folder. It's particularly helpful that they have their own copy of the formula sheet and a guide to reading exam mark schemes.  

Activities

Here's some nice resources for the first couple of maths lessons:

• What's the Difference - see below. This discussion activity reminds students of the importance of following the order of operations.

• Introduction to C1 Algebra matching activity - from SRWhitehouse on TES
• Ever wondered why? - an engaging and challenging indices puzzle from JustMaths 
• Indices activity - from SRWhitehouse on TES

My Core AS and Statistics AS pages have lots more resource recommendations for the rest of the course.

If you'd like Word copies of my pdfs to adapt for your own school, please ask.