Where are the LPA maths resources? Here!
Resources for low prior attainers in secondary maths are hard to come by, I have been making some for my year 9's and I thought I'd share them
As a secondary maths teacher who has taught many a “bottom set” in my day, I have found it hard to find resources that are accessible for such classes.
A major issue with teaching low prior attainers is that most secondary resources are based on building on the primary curriculum, assuming students have mastered it, at least to some extent. This is sometimes very very very not true. I have experienced year 7’s who do not know what an even number is, year 10’s who struggle to remember area of a rectangle formula and TERRIBLE TERRIBLE times tables across the board.
There are a lot of ways we can combat this but I have one solution, better resources for low prior attainers. Resources that can teach a concept DESPITE times tables being weak, and that atomise the key skills and break them down.
I will attach my resources on expanding a single bracket, but here is a taste:
These are carefully designed with Kristopher Boulton’s ideas of Unstoppable Learning and atomisation in mind. These also follow on from Siegfried Englemann’s theory of direct instruction.
The resources work as follows:
Establish the concept that a number adjacent to a bracket implies multiplication through examples
Practice that atomised skill.
Show how to expand a single bracket by distributing the outside number across the two inside terms, then use “brackets means multipy” to finish expanding
Practice the skill
For the final kicker, I followed this with a lesson using the distributive method on NUMBER, that’s right, things like 4(2+1). My class were not so good on order of operations or multiplication, and I knew if I led them to this after the previous lesson they would probably follow the same method.
What surprised me was that none of them thought to add within the brackets (even though we had done this before). They instead went with the distributive method and it allowed me to make links to things like multiplying by 9 is the same as multiplying by (10-1). It also allowed students to break down harder multiplications in times tables they didn’t know and be able to do them!
Thank you for sharing this. It'll be very useful for my lower sets from year 7 to 10 👊🏽
Thank you for sharing, I have developed a very similar resource four a low set on expanding brackets. Using atomisation and unstoppable learning. It’s reassuring to know I’m on the right track. Could I ask what software you use to create this resource ?