GCSE Maths (English curriculum)
In this tutorial we’re looking at iterative processes for GCSE Maths. These come in two forms at this level: trial and improvement, which is in the Foundation Tier, and working with iterative formulae, which is only required for Higher Tier….
This tutorial follows on from Part 1, which covered the skills you need to deal with simultaneous equation questions at GCSE Foundation level, using the elimination method – where you write the equations one above the other so that the…
In this tutorial we’re going to look at simultaneous equations, covering the skills you need to deal with this type of question at GCSE Foundation level. It’s one of the more challenging Foundation topics, so what we’re covering here is…
In this tutorial you’re going to find out how, if you know the formula, you can work out what units the answer will be in, and how to use units to check whether you’ve got a formula right. It won’t…
This tutorial follows on from “Working with surds” and covers skills needed for Higher GCSE and beyond. If anything in this article leaves you feeling a bit lost then go back and work through the previous one first. Rationalising the…
For Higher GCSE and beyond, you need to be able to work with surds. This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Part 2 – on rationalising the denominator – can be found here, but make sure you’re comfortable with…
Over the years that I’ve been maintaining this blog, I’ve posted over 30 maths tutorials on specific topics. Since at the time of writing I’ve just passed the 4-year mark, I thought that now would be a good time to…
This is the final instalment of my series of tutorials on straight line graphs, and follows on from “Working with a coordinate grid“, “Straight line graphs Part 1” and “Straight line graphs Part 2“. We’ve covered most of the Foundation…
This tutorial follows on from “Working with a coordinate grid” and “Straight line graphs Part 1“. We’ve covered the basics of straight line graphs – enough to get you up to about Grade 3/4 level at GCSE – and now…
In this tutorial we’re looking at working with a coordinate grid: what it looks like, terminology and plotting points, and the equations of simple vertical and horizontal lines. Once you’re comfortable with this basic content, you can move on to…
This tutorial follows on from “Working with a coordinate grid“, where we covered plotting coordinate points and the equations of vertical and horizontal lines. We’re now moving on to look at plotting other straight line graphs, and understanding the general…
This is Part 2 of a three-part tutorial on graph transformations; Part 1 can be found here. If you haven’t already worked through Part 1 then I recommend you look at it before trying to make sense of this one!…
In my tutoring, the topic of graph transformations is one that almost every Higher GCSE, IGCSE or A-level student wants to spend time on, so I thought I’d use it as the subject of a series of blog posts /…
Directed numbers are something that a lot of people find confusing. I hope that this article will help you to get your head round them! What are directed numbers? “Directed numbers” means positive and negative numbers. “Positive” or “negative” describes…
All the Casio Classwiz calculator models – both the original “X” and the new “CW” models – feature ratio mode, which didn’t exist on their predecessor the fx-83/85 GT Plus. Although it’s perfectly possible to get by without ever using…
In early 2023, Casio replaced the popular Classwiz fx-83/85GT X and fx-991EX calculator models with the Classwiz fx-83/85GT CW and the fx-991CW. The change is a lot less trivial than you might think! A short (recent) history of Casio scientific…
For Foundation GCSE you just need to know what equations and graph shapes represent direct and inverse proportion, and work with equations given to you. That’s all covered in a previous article which you can find here. For Higher you…
For Foundation GCSE you need to know what equations and graph shapes represent direct and inverse proportion, and work with equations given to you, but you don’t have to actually derive the equations, as you do at Higher. You also…
The GCSE Maths topic of systematic listing strategies is all about working out how many possible outcomes there are – i.e. how many ways there are for something to happen – for example when finding probabilities. Sometimes the simplest way…
Rate of flow is a topic that’s sometimes omitted in GCSE Maths text books, or perhaps included in the form of just a question or two in the section on compound measures. It’s only needed for the Higher Tier so…
In this post we’ll look at HCF and LCM questions, and other situations and types of problems where you need to use what you know about factors and multiples. They start off pretty straightforward, then go on to word problems…
Factors and multiples have a wide variety of uses in many different areas of Maths, so it’s a fundamental topic that you need to have a good grasp of. In this post we’ll look at how to identify a number’s…
In this post I’m sharing a set of challenging problems for GCSE Maths students that I’ve put together with the aim of helping students to improve their problem-solving skills. They’re aimed mainly at those doing the Higher Tier, but some…
Last week the exam boards published their advance information for this summer’s GCSE and A-level exams in England. They tell us what will be in the exams, but what’s harder to identify is the omissions: what won’t, and what we…
