Transition to university

Bradley Bush commented on Find the equation of a line through two points - negative gradient 8 years, 5 months ago

Thank you for the follow up advice, I'm hoping it's even better now

Lauren Richards commented on Calculate the original price before a decrease 8 years, 5 months ago

• Are you absolutely sure you want to pick fridge as an option for the object? The scenario talks about Josh really liking Emily's fridge and thus buying it on a bit of a whim, but I don't think that really happens with fridges! I think you'd only purchase it if your fridge happened to be broken. It is quite funny though so up to you whether you keep or change it. 
• I would reword parts of the question slightly, just to make the focus a bit stronger. Part a) - "When Josh told Emily how much he had paid for the {item}, Emily said the price had decreased by 30% since she bought it. How much did Emily pay for the fridge?"
• Good, clear advice!
• I think the question is really good and a valid real-world example scenario! 

Bradley Bush on Expand brackets and collect like terms 8 years, 5 months ago

Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested

Stanislav Duris on Weight of a scoop in two ice cream parlours 8 years, 5 months ago

Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested

Chris Graham commented on Identify independent events 8 years, 5 months ago

I'm not sure there's any reason to have "Must the fraction be reduced" ticked. I can't think of a reason why the student might enter any other equivalent fraction. I would untick to remove the prompt, which could unnecessarily confuse a student.

The following statement,

"Randomly selecting a boy from a class of 15 boys and 15 girls given that the previous randomly selected student from the class was a girl"

is ambiguous and needs to be worded differently. Has the girl been removed from the class? Without that information, it is impossible to answer.

To some extent, the same is true of the card deck question, which could also be clearer. 

Hannah Aldous on Using Laws for Addition and Subtraction of Logarithms 8 years, 5 months ago

Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested

Christian Lawson-Perfect on Factorising Quadratic Equations with $x^2$ Coefficients Greater than 1 8 years, 5 months ago

Gave some feedback: Has some problems

Christian Lawson-Perfect on Factorising Quadratic Equations with $x^2$ Coefficients Greater than 1 8 years, 5 months ago

Saved a checkpoint:

The statement says you can factorise as $(ax+m)(bx+n)$ but then part a asks you to factorise in the form $a(x+m)(x+n)$. Should this be a separate question, since spotting a common factor of all the coefficients is a fairly simple corollary of factorising a quadratic with leading coefficient 1?

In fact, part b is the same! I was shown $8x^2+240x+1600=0$, which factorises as $8(x+10)(x+20) = 0$. The expected answer had roots $-5/4$ and $-5/2$, which is equivalent to $8x^2+30x+25=0$. So is it the displayed equation that's wrong?

The marking for part a is wrong - I think the wrong variable is used somewhere, but it's not obvious where.

Part b could begin by asking you to find the factorisation.

In part c, I got $2x^2+13x+20$, so a particularly pedantic student might want to leave the second gapfill empty, since the coefficient of $x$ in the second part is $1$. Can you make sure that the coefficient of $x^2$ in the equation is greater than $2$?

I got $-5/3$ as one of my roots in part d, so I've enabled "allow the student to enter a fraction".

Parts c and d could use the same equation - why not? That would make a nice, self-contained question.

So, in summary:

• Fix the marking in parts a and b.
• If they use the same equation rather than a new one in each part, I think parts (a,b) make a self-contained question, and (c,d) another.

Chris Graham on Identify independent events 8 years, 5 months ago

Gave some feedback: Has some problems

Chris Graham on Find the equation of a line through two points - negative gradient 8 years, 5 months ago

Gave some feedback: Has some problems

Chris Graham commented on Find the equation of a line through two points - negative gradient 8 years, 5 months ago

Much better! 

One more thing... points A and B should be labelled the other way round. Let's give your question the context of driving in a car: if you travel from A to B then, as it stands, the gradient is positive. Related to this, you do not give any indication where the equation for the gradient comes from. You could say something like, the gradient is the ratio of the vertical change ($y2-y1$) to the horizontal change ($x2-x1$).

Bradley Bush on Create an algebraic expression from a word problem, simplify, and evaluate 8 years, 5 months ago

Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested

Bradley Bush commented on Create an algebraic expression from a word problem, simplify, and evaluate 8 years, 5 months ago

Thank you, fixed the advice.

Stanislav Duris on Rounding numbers to a given number of significant figures 8 years, 5 months ago

Gave some feedback: Ready to use

Chris Graham commented on Create an algebraic expression from a word problem, simplify, and evaluate 8 years, 5 months ago

Looks good. You still talk about single sweets in part (c) and in the advice, so you'll need to change to packets there too.

Christian Lawson-Perfect on Complete a frequency table and find the measures of central tendency 8 years, 5 months ago

Gave some feedback: Ready to use

Christian Lawson-Perfect on Complete a frequency table and find the measures of central tendency 8 years, 5 months ago

Saved a checkpoint:

Never say something "prevents us from making mistakes" - a sufficiently stupid student always exists! Instead, say it "helps to make mistakes less likely".

I've done some fiddling with the advice, but otherwise this is a good question.

Stanislav Duris commented on Rounding numbers to a given number of significant figures 8 years, 5 months ago

Rounding numbers was split into 3 separate questions.

Elliott Fletcher commented on Dividing a polynomial with remainders, using algebraic division 8 years, 5 months ago

I think long division of numbers is something a lot of students probably students struggle with, so i think it's still worth explaining how to do it.

I could maybe split the advice into two columns, one column showing the steps of dividing the polynomial with remainders and the other column showing the equivalent steps in long division form like you mentioned in the meeting on Tuesday but i'm not really sure how to do that.

Stanislav Duris commented on Rounding numbers to the nearest powers of ten 8 years, 5 months ago

Rounding numbers was split into 3 separate questions.