I’m always getting emails promising me an indispensable or unique maths resource that will address every learner’s need, transform learning, raise standards, make me a better teacher and wipe the floor with Ofsted. It’s a good job then that when I trained to be teacher we did a module entitled ‘exercising intellectual caution’ (or, in other words, ‘how to see through the crap’). It’s not often, then, that something knocks me off my feet – but when it does, I certainly take notice. Take the online gem MyMaths for example. I came across it years ago, and it quite simply made my life better. It allowed me to choose graded homeworks for students across KS3 and KS4, which they then logged onto at home. They did the homework and MyMaths did the marking, sending me the results so I could assess with ease. It contained loads of lessons and games too – and it also meant I got to read to my children at bedtime. Imagine my delight therefore when I learnt that MyMaths has teamed up with Oxford University Press to produce a new course that gives us what we want for teaching the new National Curriculum for KS3. MyMaths for KS3 has been written to help students progress and cement their mathematical fluency, reasoning and problem solving skills. The pack contains everything you need to cover the whole of KS3 and comes with a pile of top quality resources.
For starters, you get nine levelled student books (three for Year 7, three for Year 8 and three for Year 9 for lower, middle and higher ability students), nine levelled homework books, one workbook for each year, three online student books, 1 online testbank of assessment material and 1 online bumper book that contains all student books. The student-friendly books are really well put together and include an introduction, objectives, check-in questions to test prior knowledge, starter problems, worked examples, ability exercises, interesting facts, links to the MyMaths website, essential language defined, dedicated sections to everyday maths scenarios, and engaging questions throughout. The pages are colourful and illustrated with photographs and drawings that offer plenty of value and engagement. The accompanying write-in students workbooks are full of practice pages.
The teacher support has been written for teachers by teachers who know the drill. The Teacher Companions provide cracking support for the new curriculum and tip-top, easy to follow lesson plans. You get teaching notes crammed with starters, plenaries, and alternative approaches, background knowledge, resources needed, progression of topics, and answer and exercise commentary to help identify misconceptions. Homework is a key component of the MyMaths scheme – a popular aspect to this new course will be the printed homework books that link to the MyMaths site. They are nifty, portable and contain a surprising amount of work for their size. A glossary of maths terms can be found in each title, offering students a great mixture of experience when combined with their on-screen work. The digital resources contain an online testbank with a terrific range of assessments, which include print out and auto-marked tests with full reporting for clear monitoring of progress. You also get digital versions of all student books including InvisiPen tutorials which help students through some worked solutions with audio-commentary. On top of this there’s a handsome bank of assessment materials for you to assign to students and a markbook feature so you can view homeworks, give extensions, award marks and track progress.
This has been incredibly well planned and thought through.
Of course the unique feature of this scheme is that it is the only one with direct links to the well-respected and pioneering MyMaths website to ensure students get an amalgam of resources and experiences. Perhaps the most stand-out feature for me is that this is a fully-flexible phase-based scheme (rather than by year or a level) so in theory you could deliver the curriculum in three years or less. There is a MyMaths ‘secure knowledge’ philosophy behind the topic-based route through the curriculum and this is ‘learn it once and learn it well’. The idea of course is to move on from the archaic spiral curriculum and enable greater coherence in delivery.
You would expect assessment to be right at the centre of the scheme and it is, with brilliant tests that are good to go and written so that students have the skills to progress; when it comes to monitoring the progress students make there is a unique approach to levelling with colour-coded progression maps.
Overall, I think the scheme scrubs up brilliantly and will be a marvellous replacement for tired old stuff you may have been using up to now – and for something this good you can’t grumble at the price either. MyMaths deserves to be at the heart of your classroom and will get your maths sparks flying again. Take a look at the MyMaths website and see for yourself just how good the online provision is.
