Engineers, doctors, shopkeepers, researchers, chefs… no matter what the job, an understanding of maths is essential! To help your bright young thinkers develop their maths skills, we have created new series in line with Cambridge Assessment International Education’s primary and lower secondary curriculum frameworks.
Here, we will look at some of the changes to the resources and curriculum frameworks in more detail.
Are you teaching other subjects? We’ve also outlined the changes to our Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Science and English/ English as a second language series.
1. Specific guidance for new Thinking and Working Mathematically
The biggest change to the Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Mathematics curriculum frameworks is Thinking and Working Mathematically. Thinking and Working Mathematically is enquiry-led active learning. It is not a separate end of lesson activity, but something that you can embed throughout lessons in every unit of work.
To help with this, we have included specific guidance in the teacher’s resources. Furthermore, our professional development training for Primary and Lower Secondary Maths covers the introduction of Thinking and Working Mathematically as a significant change in Cambridge International’s framework for Principals and Heads of Department.
Let’s look at Thinking and Working Mathematically in more detail.
Thinking and Working Mathematically replaces the previous problem solving strand throughout all stages. It makes sense of ideas and helps students build connections between different facts, procedures and concepts.
So, what does this mean for students? Thinking and Working Mathematically involves making decisions about what mathematical knowledge, procedures and strategies might be used to gain a deeper understanding of questions. These strategies can help students when they approach unseen questions in assessments.
2. Clarity over learning objectives
Our resources clearly show how activities and exercises link to the curriculum frameworks, so you can be confident you’re covering everything you need to.
3. Guidance with interpreting data
There is now more focus on interpreting data when it comes to statistics and probability. Students need to be able to analyse charts, graphs and raw data so that they can draw mathematical conclusions.
Throughout the series, we’ve made sure to include plenty of guidance with interpreting data, as well as questions that allow students to practise.
4. Clearer progression between stages
For a complete overview, background knowledge sections within our teacher’s resources support you by showing the knowledge and understanding that learners will encounter in earlier and later stages.
This change comes in line with the new curriculum frameworks, in which units and topics now follow on more smoothly from stage to stage.
We’ve summarised these changes to our Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary Mathematics series in this handy infographic. Click on the image below to download for quick reference.
If you would like to know more about how our resources can help you adjust to curriculum framework changes, click on the individual subjects on our Cambridge Primary and Lower Secondary hub page.
