My daughter has never been a fan of the Maths questions in Science. She actually understands the Science that she is doing (she is doing Physics and Biology) and is quite good at answering questions when they do not involve Maths. So I knew we had to start buildilg her confidence when it comes to questions that involve Maths. And really it is just confidence building, it is a case of seeing that you need to apply some Maths, not getting worried about it and then going about the Maths in a logical step by step manner.

When I was recently looking on the Oxford Univeristy Press site for some extra secondary resources I happened to stumble upon a new set of books the Maths Skills for Science range. Naturally I was immediately interested (sounded a bit too good to be true as I knew we had to work on this), so I looked further and spotted this one – Maths Skills for GCSE Science. The book stated that it is suitable for ALL exam boards, it mentioned it included worked examples (something that I find vitally important when it comes to Maths) and I quickly double checked and spotted that you could download all the answers for FREE (the answers are here). On first look it was ticking the right boxes so I asked if we could get a review copy and we were kindly given this copy.

This is NOT a science student book so don’t expect lots of pictures explaining science concepts, this is a Maths book which focuses on Maths that we use in Science. It is set out over double pages. Each double page covers a Maths concept (or mini-concept). It starts with an explanation (these are well-worded), then there are worked examples, followed by the all important practice questions and finally on some of the pages you also get stretch yourself questions.

I liked that it is set out over a double page. It is not dragged out. It is concise – “here is what you need to know and here are some examples”. Granted some people may think they need extra practice questions but it your kids are doing Science at this level I am sure you will have Science resources for your exam board which will already include practice questions using these Maths skills.

The way I see us using this is this book will slot it into our Science. What do I mean by that? As we read up about a concept in our Science book we may realise there is Maths involved and that we need to revise that Maths, so we would then go and find the relevant page in our Maths Skills book. We would then read the explanation and work through the questions. Once we had completed the double page in the Maths Skills book we would then go back to our Science book and go through the practice questions that they have. By doing it this way I don’t see us needing extra questions, because the extra questions would be in our Science books.

Okay so the other important question is what Maths is actually covered in this book?

So that looks like it covers everything that we need.

We have only just received this book but I am already thankful that I found it. I like the explanations and I know it is going to be a really useful book to have while we study our Physics and Biology.

For those interested in this book you can buy it directly from Amazon – OUP Maths Skills for GCSE Science

and as I mentioned above you can also get it direct from the OUP website – Maths Skills Books

Admin – As I mentioned above I requested a review copy and I was kindly given one. All opinions expressed about the book are my own and are not affected by the fact that we were given a copy of this book. We were not paid for this post, this is a book that I believe will be useful.

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