Hello! Here is a selection of tasks you should do, between now and the start of term, to help prepare for your A Level Maths or Further Maths course.
We have put together the following Getting Ahead work to help you prep for your course in September.
We look forward to you starting College with us soon.
The A Level Maths course is split up into three main components: Pure Maths (Mainly Algebra-based topics) which accounts for 2/3 of the content, Statistics (Data and Probability) and Mechanics (Physics-based topics such as Velocity and Forces), both taking up 1/6 of the content.
Maths is a challenging subject at A Level that requires good problem-solving skills as well as commitment and resilience. Lots of students say there is a big step up from GCSE to A Level in Maths and we want you to be prepared as best as possible. Some of the work set will be difficult and take time, however we find those students who work hard at it and ask questions often do the best.
Maths can also be really rewarding and enjoyable when you have spent a long time working on a problem and you finally get to the correct solution.
We would like you to complete three sections of questions on each of the above components. These are all questions taken from various GCSE Maths papers based on the content that you will need for A Level, in some cases we have chosen some of the more challenging GCSE questions to help prepare you for taking Maths to the next level. You are welcome to use Revision Guides or Videos online to help you solve and understand some of the problems. Think of it like doing an Open Book extended GCSE Maths paper which just focuses on topics leading to A Level.
Please complete all the questions on separate paper, and check your answers against the solutions provided at the end – you don’t have to do it all in one go as we are expecting it to take a few hours to do. You can print out some of the graphs if you wish, however we are happy for you to draw a rough sketch of the graph on your own paper (as you will be asked to do at A Level) rather than accurately plotting.
Try and have a go at all the questions, remember some of these are difficult and we don’t expect everyone to get them all right. Also be aware that these are the types of question you will be getting as part of the A Level Maths course. We will be going over some of these topics again from September onwards, but we move quickly onto the new A Level content, so you need to be up with the required GCSE knowledge.
Please mark your own work by checking against the answers here.
It is really important that you do this, and checking your answers is something we are going to expect you to do often at Havant. We are not expecting everyone to get them all correct the first time around, but if there is a particular topic you have struggled on it would be good if you went back over that before you start in September and looked up videos online or your GCSE notes.
The final answers are underlined. Please look at all the workings and the extra notes/hints written in blue. Even if you didn’t get it fully correct, it is important, and a useful skill, for you to be able to understand how the full solution works and where you went wrong.
Edexcel Exam Board – this is a link to our exam board Edexcel and the A Level Mathematics specification
Rups Whybrow
Peter Beard
Jane MacDonald
We look forward to seeing you soon!
