[TITLE: What is Key Skills at Key Stage 3?]
Key Skills for Key Stage 3 is a concise document that we wanted to be really user friendly
for teachers, parents, students â€¦ really outlining the key objectives that we think
students should be working towards in years 7, 8 and 9.
It contains all the information you will need all in one place. So things such as starters,
resources, manipulatives and suggestions for mastery and support.
[TITLE: Who has created Key Skills at Key Stage 3?]
My name is Kate William. I currently am Head of Maths at school in London and I work at
another school in Kent. I've been teaching maths for nearly ten years now. I started
in a primary setting and then I worked on the transition between primary into secondary
and now Iâ€™ve worked in all years up to GCSE in secondary school.
[TITLE: How can Key Skills at Key Stage 3 help me in the classroom?]
Teachers might use it as their core scheme of work. It can be used for that and there
is a separate lesson breakdown for each objective, so it does allow for some creativity and flexibility.
Teachers could use it alongside an existing scheme of work to just check that they're
hitting those key objectives. They might not even necessarily look at the objectives, but
they might want to use the starters and support and mastery resources that are included.
For year 7 and year 8 we've created sort of a virtual classroom environment. So the key
objectives which range between about four and six per term are on the whiteboard. And
around the classroom there is links to the manipulatives, links to the starters and a
link to the mastery and support resources
For year 9 it's a really similar concept, but we just wanted it to look a little more
grown up, so it's a virtual notice board. Again on the notice board youâ€™ll have
the key objectives, a link to making the lessons a bit more hands on, so pulling away from
manipulatives but still trying to make it as engaging as possible, a link to starters
which starts to become a bit more GCSE focused and another link again to mastery and support.
Click on the mastery and support links within the year 7 and 8 document and within the year
9 document and that will take you to a page where there's a few more objectives to stretch
your higher ability students, but also a link to an Escape Room and this will be through
Desmos. The idea being that students can't progress through the escape room until they
have mastered one of those key objectives. So additional teacher input will be needed
to support your students, but it's a great way of checking that the students understand
before they then move on.
[TITLE: How does Key Skills at Key Stage 3 link to Maths Progress (2nd Edition)?]
The key objectives through each term were taken from the current Maths Progress Scheme
of Work, but just really narrowed down. So really just taking those core principles from
each section of the current scheme of work and aligning them altogether regardless of
ability with the textbook.
[TITLE: Why have you created Key Skills at Key Stage 3?]
I really want teachers to be able to look at this document to really narrow down what
we think they actually need to be teaching. So to save some time from going through an
endless scheme of work, these are the objectives you need to teach, use the spare time to make
the lessons more engaging.
These students have come from primary where manipulatives are used, blocks in the lessons
â€¦ use the time try and get some manipulatives in. Try and make it a bit more practical,
hands on, as long as we can hit those objectives then other time and energy can be put into
just making it fun and engaging to show our students coming into secondary school that
math isn't hugely daunting and scary, it can still be enjoyable.
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