We continued the Money & Finance topic with a look at hourly pay rates; weekly & monthly pay, salaries and commission.
The class were again reminded that after the Easter holidays they would be sitting their S3 exams, which would include a Non-Calculator paper as well as a Calculator paper. Any of the work covered in S1, S2 and S3 to date could appear in the test.
We continued to look at developing greater Financial Competence by further looking at average pay, salaries, wage deductions & paying tax on wages. This led onto looking at loans and the shocking statistic of how many people in the UK are in debt (not just acceptable debt for a mortgage).
The class were given details of the judging criteria for the Finance Project and all groups supplied with a breakdown of what this entails. The groups should be making a start on investigating the pertinent financial details regarding their chosen topic and should be clear on what they are expected to produce when they give their presentation.
The class were also informed of a good resource/website to refer to in future life to help them manage their finances and that the advice contained thereon is of benefit to people with differing backgrounds and situations. The figurehead is Martin Lewis the Money Saving Expert who has appeared on national television dispensing useful advice. The web address is http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/Teenagers-cash-class for downloading the Teen Cash Guide and from there, other pages with various pieces of information can be accessed.
We looked at developing greater Financial Competence by looking at average pay, salaries, wage deductions, paying tax on wages.
A good website for supplying information on various careers including what the job would entail, the necessary qualifications and an indication on salary – http://www.planitplus.net/careerzone/ . This is a good starting point for anyone wishing to investigate possible future jobs.
The class were given details of the judging criteria for the Finance Project. The groups should be making a start on investigating the pertinent financial details regarding their chosen topic and should be clear on what they are expected to produce when they give their presentation.
The class were also informed of a good resource/website to refer to in future life to help them manage their finances and that the advice contained thereon is of benefit to people with differing backgrounds and situations. The figurehead is Martin Lewis the Money Saving Expert who has appeared on national television dispensing useful advice. The web address is http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/Teenagers-cash-class for downloading the Teen Cash Guide and from there, other pages with various pieces of information can be accessed.
This week the class did a bit more work on problem solving in practical situations before starting the topic Time, Timetables & Temperature.
The winning group from our class would give their Café Project presentation again and would be judged against the winning groups from all the other S1 classes.
The class were given advance notice that the week beginning 12th May they would be doing an end of year test on all the topics covered through the course of the year, including the work as part of the Café Project. The topics are – Whole Numbers, Symmetry, Angles, Problem Solving, Decimals, Fractions & Percentages, Equations & Expressions, Perimeter, Area & Volume, Scale Drawing, 2D & 3D Shapes and related properties such as Nets, Surface Area, Time, Timetables & Temperature, Measurement as well as C0-ordinates.
Homework 3-4 on Further Calculus was due in on Tuesday 18th March.
We started the final topic Exponential & Logarithmic Functions carrying on some of the work done in Unit 1 – Functions & Graphs. The bulk of the work/questions in an exam are typically dealing with exponential/logarithmic functions and algebraic manipulation of these to solve equations. This is straightforward once the steps have been mastered assuming that the Laws of Logarithms and the inverse function can be remembered (it does also rely on knowledge of indices and fractions from earlier). We discussed the real life uses for this especially population growth.
The work can be found on the MyMaths website under Library – A Level – Core 2 – Logs – Exponential Graphs; Rules of Logs & Log Equations as well as Library – A Level – Core 3 – Exponentials – Exponential Function; The Natural Log; Graphs and Growth & Decay.
The class were issued with a Practice NAB to be completed by Thursday 27th March when we will go through it all with guidance on the threshold scores and how the marks are awarded. The actual NAB will take place on Friday 28th March. The homework is also detailed on the website that the school now uses to inform parents of homeworks – https://harlawacademy.showmyhomework.co.uk
We continued the National 5 work with the first unit – Applications, with the topic Trigonometry. We continued with the Sine Rule, using it to calculate missing sides, followed by missing angles. This can be found on the MyMaths website under Library – Shape – Trigonometry – Sine Rule. This led onto the Cosine Rule which involved missing sides – Library – Shape – Trigonometry – Cosine Rule Sides.
We also spent one period doing Non-Calculator work revisiting Percentages and this will be a regular topic over the next few weeks.
We continued the Percentages work with a look at simple interest on a bank account. This can be found on the MyMaths website under Library – Number – Money & Finance – Simple Interest. This led onto other aspects of Money & Finance with a look at simple bills; VAT; electricity bills and wages.
The class had been issued a homework on the MyMaths website (Simple Equations) with a deadline of Tuesday 18th March for completion. The homework is also detailed on the website that the school now uses to inform parents of homeworks – https://harlawacademy.showmyhomework.co.uk
MyMaths is now accessible via the Puffin Academy flash browser which allows pupils to easily access Mymaths on most tablet and mobile devices, including iPads. Puffin Academy is a free, mobile and tablet Flash browser. It is specifically designed for pupils, teachers and parents, as it always enforces site filtering by only allowing whitelisted educational websites to be accessed. It’s only for educational websites and fully supports Flash content, as well as videos on iPhone and iPad. To access MyMaths on your tablet or iPad, simply download the Puffin Academy App from the Apple or Android store to your device. Once downloaded, the quickest way to access MyMaths is to open the Puffin Academy browser and search for MyMaths in the search bar. You can also bookmark MyMaths.
We continued the Finance Project this time planning/costing for a holiday and foreign exchange. We then looked at developing greater Financial Competence by looking at average pay, salaries, wage deductions, paying tax on wages.
A good website for supplying information on various careers including what the job would entail, the necessary qualifications and an indication on salary – http://www.planitplus.net/careerzone/ . This is a good starting point for anyone wishing to investigate possible future jobs.
The class had been issued with a homework on the Mymaths website (Best Buys) with a deadline of Thursday 20th March for completion.
MyMaths is now accessible via the Puffin Academy flash browser which allows pupils to easily access Mymaths on most tablet and mobile devices, including iPads. Puffin Academy is a free, mobile and tablet Flash browser. It is specifically designed for pupils, teachers and parents, as it always enforces site filtering by only allowing whitelisted educational websites to be accessed. It’s only for educational websites and fully supports Flash content, as well as videos on iPhone and iPad. To access MyMaths on your tablet or iPad, simply download the Puffin Academy App from the Apple or Android store to your device. Once downloaded, the quickest way to access MyMaths is to open the Puffin Academy browser and search for MyMaths in the search bar. You can also bookmark MyMaths.
We continued the Finance Project with another lesson on probability and calculating probability. This can be found on the MyMaths website under Library – Data – Probability – Simple Probability.
We then went onto a brief look at the recent budget, discussing some of the implications it will have. We then looked at developing greater Financial Competence by looking at minimum wage, average pay, salaries, wage deductions, paying tax on wages.
A good website for supplying information on various careers including what the job would entail, the necessary qualifications and an indication on salary – http://www.planitplus.net/careerzone/ . This is a good starting point for anyone wishing to investigate possible future jobs.
We had one last group give their presentation as we had run out of time last week. After voting the winner was announced to be Galaxy Café who had a poster, a powerpoint to accompany them and a fantastic model of their design (the head of the Design & Technology dept was very impressed by this model). All groups were given feedback on their presentation.
We investigated the Soma cube.
The rest of the week would be spent on problem solving in practical situations.
PLPs were written last week and owing to the presentations were issued this week.
