KS3 Maths series that really works

Posted on April 27, 2022 by ofamily

I have written a few posts about the Mastering Mathematics series that we started using this year (at the start my daughter’s Year 9) and it is honestly such a brilliant series, that I am writing another post. And NO this is not a paid for post or a post that is linked to the publishers in any way this is a happy home educator post, thrilled that we found a Maths series that in 9 months has just lifted my daughter’s confidence, improved her understanding and truly set her up for her IGCSE Maths. I can honestly say that for her IGCSE subjects – Maths is one of the subjects that I am not worried about because I know we have a good foundation, I know we have gotten into good practices and as long as we keep on, in this manner we are going to be absolutely fine, more than fine.

I really feel that by the end of Year 8 she was not happy with her Maths, she was doubting her ability and less than a year later she is cruising through, she is confident, she knows that she is getting it (and she is getting it). I do have to give her lots of credit, she is a hard worker and she has really tried, she reads every explanation, every worked example and then she works through all the practice examples in the text book and the practice book (for a detailed explanation about the practice books please read this post – year 9 practice books). She really does put the effort in and she never complains. So credit to her. She has done an amazing job, I am incredibly proud of her.

But I do want to speak about this range and why I think it has worked so well for us and why I am going to be using it with my son when he starts Year 7 in September.

They break the topics down into sub-sections and then for every sub-section you have a clear (and I do mean clear) explanation followed by worked examples. These worked examples are gold because it just takes that explanation, puts it into context and shows the user how to apply it.

  • Mastering Mathematics by Hodder Education Year 9 Books
  • Mastering Mathematics by Hodder Education Year 9 Books
  • Mastering Mathematics by Hodder Education Year 9 Books

After that you get practice questions broken down into three bands, with every band the questions do get harder. And yes we do all the bands. We start with the easy questions, make sure we are getting the basics, then we do band two and after band two we move to the questions in the practice book and then come back and do band three questions (band three questions are the hardest). And I must stress all the answers for all the questions are free to download from the website. So I printed all the answers out and once she has worked through a set of questions, she marks them herself.

Mastering Mathematics by Hodder Education Year 9 Books

It works, it has really worked for us. We started at the beginning of Book 3 and we have worked through chapter by chapter, reading everything, discussing when we need to and then doing the practice questions. And over the months that she has been working through this book her Maths has gone from a not very confident subject to a subject where she is cruising and often actually ends up doing extra questions just because she worked through her planned Maths so quickly and well, why-not?

I really do believe this series was exactly what she needed and I am so impressed with how her confidence in Maths has soared by just using their series for 9 months.

We really do Highly recommend this Maths series.

Edit – Just to add the series is split into 3 levels the thinking being – Book 1 would be used for Year 7, Book 2 would be used for year 8 and Book 3 would be Year 9 – just wanted to clarify that as someone already asked. This post talks about book 3 because we only started using the series in my daughter’s year 9.

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Out of the Ashes – a story about foot and mouth disease

Posted on April 27, 2022 by ofamily

There are so many brilliant Michael Morpurgo books out there that it is very hard to choose which ones to read but this one, even though it is shorter, should be on your must read list. It is not a true story, the characters are fictional but the events are true, foot and mouth disease did rear its ugly head in England 2001, farms where literally destroyed and farmers and their families were devastated, so in many regards it is a true story about what many people lived through.

The story is written though the eyes of Becky, she is the only child of farmer and her dad happened to give her a diary for Christmas of 2000 so the events of 2001 are written as her diary entries. We (my daughter and I) loved this format, it being written as a diary. We felt like the author included some lovely details that made you feel like you were actually dipping into a private diary and reading how these events affected Becky and her family. We loved the details like the way she talks about her best friend, how she talks about the differences between farmers and townies and even how she admits that she struggles with her mom. We enjoyed reading about her cousin Josh and how she named the lamb who she was hand rearing Little Josh. It really is a masterclass example of writing, of bringing the reader in, giving them enough personal detail about the characters that the reader starts to really care and relate to the characters so when foot and mouth arrives you feel like it is you that is living through it.

It is a very moving story, sad in places, truly sad when the animals are killed and then all burnt and when Becky’s father can’t cope and is hospitalised. It is sad, there is no getting around that but it also rings true, what these farmers and their families must have gone through, having there homes invaded and their farms totally destroyed I do think it could have mentally destroyed quite a few families. And then even though you feel like everything is lost Michael Morpurgo keeps you around a bit longer to show you that there is hope, hope when they bring Becky’s dad home from hospital and when they start bringing back animals to the farm. He beautifully completes the circle (masterclass right there how he does not leave the reader in despair but shows them there is hope if you just keep on going).

Yes it is a short story and that has been one of the criticisms that I have read but in all honesty it is nice to mix up shorter stories with the longer stories and even though it is shorter it is expertly crafted and the reader is taken on a journey, a journey into real events that happened.

Because it is an emotional read I would recommend it for kids aged 10 and older, and even if your kiddo is in Year 10 or 11 I still think it is worth a read because it does explain something which is apart of recent British History.

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Refugee Boy By Benjamin Zephaniah

Posted on April 22, 2022 by ofamily

I must confess I had never heard of this book until I started downloading almost every secondary reading list I could find (I am trying to create my own reading list for my daughter) and I then started searching online for book reviews to see which books might be interesting and also not too graphic. This one popped up and I read some interesting comments so it went onto my pre-reading list and then a few days later I spotted it at our local library so I quickly borrowed it and read it.

Now I must admit I was a bit nervous about this book, it is a story about a refugee from Ethiopia and Eritrea and that immediately made me worried that there might be some graphic scenes about torture, rape or murder. Thankfully there wasn’t but just so everyone is aware in this story there are scenes where the family are threatened and then the boy’s mother is murdered (hacked to death) and later his father is also murdered, but none of these are too graphic. What does stand out when you read this story is that although the characters are fictional the actual story rings true and as you read you nod your head and go – yeah, that is what would have happened. The events, the way they unfold, parents trying everything to protect their kids, adapting to a new country, to foster care then the court case it all reads as if it were a true story and you just know that this author researched his topic really carefully and understood what he was writing about.

Okay so the story centers around a young boy – Alem whose father is Ethiopian and his mother is Eritrean which means that when the countries are at war he is not safe in either country (because the Ethiopians consider him Eritrean and the Eritreans consider him an Ethiopian, so both sides want to kill him). This leads to the family getting threatened and eventually the father brings Alem to England on a holiday but the father then disappears leaving Alem as a refugee in England (this was his fathers plan). The story follows Alem as he struggles to fit in to life in England, and as he adapts to a foster family.

It is a moving story which is beautifully written. You start to understand the struggle of this young boy, he wants to be with his family, he misses them and worries about their safety, he also wants to study hard in England and is desperate to learn yet no where appears to be safe for him, even England has problems for him. I don’t want to give too much away but it is a story about people, not just Alem and his parents but you also get to see a foster family and how the foster sister struggles with the decisions her parents make, you get a glimpse of other families living in a shelter and even a glimpse of the people working to help Alem, their own struggle.

I am adding this book to my daughter’s recommended reading list and I am marking it as an important one to read because I think it covers a wide range of topics that we do need to expose our kids to and discuss with them and for us reading a story is often that starting point for those discussions.

I really do Highly Recommend this for older kids – I would say ages 12 and over

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Macbeth Revision Guide from Twinkl

Posted on April 20, 2022 by ofamily

We had a lovely break over the last two weeks but now I am getting back into our home education and setting us up for our new topics that we are going to cover over the next 12 weeks (I like to work in 6 week blocks it is just a manageable time frame and works well for us). One of our big new topics, one that we are very excited about because my daughter enjoys Shakespeare, is going to be Macbeth. We are going to work through it slowly and we are going to do lots of questions (GCSE/IGCSE type question) and work on writing longer answers and how to structure the answers. It is going to be a big topic for us.

I have already gathered the resources that I want to use and we are mostly set up (there is some printing that I still need to do). But the one resource that I have already printed out in full, read it cover to cover, read it carefully, made notes on and was very impressed with is the Macbeth Revision Guide from the Twinkl Resources website. And yes I know it is a Revision guide and we are only just starting Macbeth but I often read Revision guides first when I am setting myself up on a topic.

So this post is just going to be on the Twinkl Macbeth Revision guide and I will write about our other Macbeth resources in different posts.

Okay it is quite a big resource to print out – 59 pages. But if you are working through Macbeth it is 59 pages that really are worth reading. It starts off with a bit about how they suggest you use the revision guide and about the exam (this guide is aimed at student writing GCSE English Literature but you can use it with anyone studying Macbeth). Then it goes onto Context (background which I think is vital), a Who’s Who page (We loved this quick summary of the main characters, I think it is really useful to show the kids this summary before they start so they understand how the characters fit together) and then a really good summary of the main events of the play. Again I thought this summary was excellent and great to read for any parent who is wanting to discuss Macbeth with their kids.

After the brilliant “main point pages” they go onto dealing with the 5 main themes in quite of bit of detail. For each theme they include a page talking about the theme, putting it into context, giving you key quotes (really loved this), then three mini-exam questions followed by a long exam question after which they show you two examples of model answers – a good example and a great example. Along the side of the model answers they also make notes explaining some points about the model answer.

So yes it is 59 pages, which may seem like a lot but it is 59 really worthwhile pages. And this is written as revision guide (and I think it will be an excellent revision guide) but it is also really handy to read before hand if you are the home educator or a parent who is going to be working through Macbeth with your kids.

I was so impressed with this Macbeth Revision guide (it was the first English Literature revision guide that I spotted on the Twinkl website) that I actually searched for others and found they have created quite a few GCSE English Literature Revision guides including ones for Romeo and Juliet and An Inspector Calls (they were two that we were interested in) but you can find the other guides here – GCSE English Literature Revision Guides.

Admin – This post is not linked to Twinkl in any way. I spotted the Revision guide, read it and was impressed with it.

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Rollercoasters – KS3 Reading books with free activities

Posted on April 12, 2022 by ofamily

I have written a few individual posts about some of the English books that we have read as part of our KS3 English, books that we read together, discuss and then do linked English activities. My kids really enjoy that, they enjoy linking in their Grammar or Writing activities to a good story that we are reading and discussing. And it just so happens that most of those KS3 English books that we have used over the past few years have been part of a range of books called Rollercoasters. So I thought I would share a bit about these books and why they have worked so well for us (and and just to clarify this does not mean I am stopping using them I am already planning on using some of them with my son in his next academic year).

Firstly we have found that the stories are GOOD stories, they are engaging stories, stories that involve the kids and always have something of value in them (something that the kids learn without even really realising they are learning – like in Sky Hawk there was a lot about friendship, how you treat a person, how not to judge a person just because of finances, but it was all very subtle and part of a brilliant story).

The stories are also great examples of the type of writing that you want the kids to try and create themselves. Writing that involves using all senses to describe, using a mixture of sentence lengths, cliff hangers, effective figurative language, developing full characters, characters that have flaws but are still lovable – I could go on and on). And in all the stories we have read there is NO content which I think is inappropriate or not age-correct (something which I have found in other resources).

There is also a mix of the type of stories they include – there are some historical context stories (like Lightning Strike, Edgar and Adolf and Out of the Rubble), there are some that are more contemporary and that deal with relationships (Sky hawk and White Dolphin) and there are some that are just funny and will make even a reluctant reader want to continue turning the pages (Bug Muldoon), they also have classics (Treasure Island and The Jungle book spring to mind) and lots more. It really is worth just scrolling down the list of books that they have included in this series. That is honestly what I do on a regular basis – when I am trying to think of a new book I go to this list and scroll down and I always get inspiration (the only issue I have is I often end up wanting to use more that one and then have to chose – I would love to have a MASSIVE collection of books).

Okay and then there are the Lesson Plans and Activity worksheets. These packs are FREE to download and each one is slightly different but you tend to always get a summary of the story and a summary of how the lessons fit into the story. Then there are individual lesson plans and worksheets/ activities for each lesson plan. We don’t always use these linked activities but I do always read through it as it gives me an excellent starting point for all of the books. With some stories I just pick out a few individual activities and then with other stories we work though almost every lesson and every activity (Sky Hawk and Bug Muldoon we did most of the activities). For a home educator these free to download packs are gold, you can pick and choice what you want and it saves you a lot of time.

  • Sky Hawk Book and lesson printouts
  • Edgar and Adolf Free to download resource pack
  • Free to download teacher's pack to go with the book White Dolphin

So that is generally why we rave about this series so much but for those who are wondering where to start I thought it might also be helpful to highlight our own Top 3 from this list.

Sky Hawk – Still one of our all time favourite reads EVER. The writing style just gripped us from the very beginning and we were riding the wave of friendships and people trying to save a precious creature. We were moved close to tears at time and then we rejoiced. It really is a beautiful story and although there are sad moments it was a uplifting story on how people can come together and help each other, how people may start out not being the kindest but can learn and change. This story lead us to discover a whole range of stunning books by the author Gill Lewis (we now love her books). And it is the first book that I always recommend to anyone looking for a story for Year 7’s or Year 8’s.

Bug Muldoon – what a character, really such a beautifully sculptured character we loved this adorable bug, who does also have some attitude because if you are a beetle battling bees and ants you will need some gumption. But again a brilliant writing style and so completely different to Sky Hawk. This is more upbeat, and we were often chuckling along at the phrases coming out of the lead character. I feel like this would be great for reluctant readers or kids needing some inspiration on how they could create their own unique piece of writing.

Lightning Strike. This is set in Victorian England and it does deal with how hard life was back then (if you were a factory worker) but the story is not just Victorian England was hard. It actually takes the kids back in time, you feel like you are living there in Victorian England, like you are part of this group of factory workers trying to create something, anything with your life. If you buy one book on Victorian England, for me this is the one to buy.

That is quite a long post, but I really wanted to try and explain a little bit of why we have become such big fans of these Rollercoasters books.

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