How We Developed Our Free GCSE Maths Revision Lesson Library

While we know that our one to one maths tuition has the greatest impact on improving outcomes in KS3 and KS4 maths, we are also aware that schools are not always able to provide this level of intervention to all their students.

So, to respond to the needs of all students, we have now developed a GCSE maths revision library of free online lessons, resources and downloadable worksheets that is available for all maths teachers and students, at school or at home.

If you want to explore what is available straight away, you can find our free GCSE maths revision resources under ‘Resources’ on the website!

See also: Fluent In Five For Secondary

Otherwise, read on to discover how and why we have developed our free GCSE maths revision library, and why we believe it will be a real game-changer in reinforcing the teaching and learning you do in class.

Free GCSE revision in a nutshell

We have drawn together a team of highly experienced secondary maths teachers and examiners to design and create an ever-growing resource library of online lessons and resources which places students at its heart. 

Working in conjunction with our GCSE maths tutoring programmes, we have designed these resources to be as accessible and flexible to use as possible.

Our aim is to support secondary school teachers to plan and deliver outstanding lessons and to support students in developing amazing mathematical skills and increasing their maths confidence.

For students

Students can explore our lessons as a way to revise a topic after studying it in class, to prepare for an upcoming series of lessons, or to help them recall previously learnt GCSE maths topics.

For teachers

Teachers will be able to reduce their planning workload with this series of reliable lessons and resources that you can direct your students to after class. These lessons enable independent learning to continue even after the school day has ended. 

Principles behind our free GCSE lessons and worksheets

Before we even started developing these lessons, there were a few basic principles we agreed between us as educators to ensure we were all aligned in our approach. After all, with several different teachers, authors, illustrators and editors, we needed to start from a coherent framework that produced easy-to-follow resources. 

• If we are not saving teachers’ time or reducing their workload, we are not doing our job properly.
• The maths lessons need to be high quality, trustworthy and reliable enough to pick up and teach from in class (or to give to students to substitute or supplement your own teaching).
• Our processes should be robust enough to pick up errors during development. When errors occur after publication, we have a rapid fixing methodology to correct them immediately.
• No individual lesson stands alone; topics have been considered in integrated clusters to ensure we can direct students to the next (or previous) most suitable lesson.
• Students must be able to work independently through each lesson with support available for them where they get stuck. 
• As a company, our mission is to help narrow the maths disadvantage gap, so it is important to us that the maths lessons and downloadable worksheets are free to all. 
• While we believe in learning maths for life, we also know that students need to pass their GCSE maths exams; these lessons are deliberately designed to provide help for those students working towards a Grade 5 in GCSE. Higher level subjects are also covered.

GCSE topics covered in our revision lessons

We have split the GCSE maths curriculum into 6 overarching topic areas:

• Algebra
• Number
• Geometry and measure
• Ratio and proportion
• Probability
• Statistics

Although we would love to launch with every lesson ready to go, our development process means that we are adding approximately 5 to 10 new lessons and worksheets each week on our website.

Take a look at Algebra and Number to get an idea of the approach to each lesson and read on for a breakdown of the lesson structure.

Guiding structure for resources: hub and cluster model

It is common for students to learn maths as a series of independent, standalone topics. In reality, maths topics are heavily linked and rely on one another.

Once a topic has been covered, it can also often be difficult for students to know what to learn next and how the knowledge they have just acquired relates to other areas of the curriculum.

To help with this, we have split each topic area into a series of hubs. Each hub contains an overview of a series of related and interconnected lessons, each of which links again to more detailed lessons on each of these related topics.

For example, our ‘Factorising‘ hub gives an overview of each of the types of factorisation that are needed at GCSE. Each example then links to a specific lesson that explores a particular type of factorisation in more detail.

• Factorising single brackets
• Factorising quadratics
• Difference of two squares

In this way, students are able to easily identify and focus on a particular area of development, while being able to appreciate how that lesson relates and is connected to the wider topic area.

The structure of every free online lesson

We want our online lessons to feel familiar and simple to navigate. We have therefore broken each lesson into a series of sections.

Introduction

We start with a brief summary of everything that will be covered on the page. We also include a useful hierarchy of pages at the top to help users orient themselves in the wider topic and hub.

Prerequisite knowledge

Next, we provide a list of lessons that the user should be confident with before exploring the content covered on that page. The items listed here also link to the corresponding lessons to make it simple to access these required skills.

What is this lesson?

In this section, we give clear definitions of the topics covered in the lesson and provide a summary of all of the required knowledge.

We often use on-page interactive flip cards to help condense and visualise this knowledge further and serve as a revision aid for the user.

How to do the topic

Next, we give a detailed explanation of how to do each of the topics covered on that page by breaking them down into easy-to-follow and simple-to-review steps.

These steps are often accompanied by another flip card to allow the user to test themselves.

Examples

Now that we have a general idea of what the topic is, and how to approach it using a simple step-by-step guide, it is time to see the steps in action!

Each example starts with a brief description of the type of example that will be explored, before being carefully broken down one step at a time. The first example is usually presented fully to allow the user to have a complete overview of how to answer the question. 

Then, each of the following examples is usually presented via drop-down expandable boxes to encourage the user to more easily choose which example they would like to focus on, and directly engage with it step-by-step.

Common misconceptions

When trying to learn these topics, there are often many different types of misconceptions that can hamper a learner’s success. Highlighting those misconceptions can help students to avoid repeatedly making them and improve their understanding of the topic.

With this in mind, every page lists several of the most common misconceptions that learners make, along with examples and tips for how to avoid them.

Practice questions

Now we have learnt about the topic and familiarised ourselves with the most common mistakes, it is time to practice! Each page has around 6 practice GCSE maths questions, specifically designed to work alongside the examples in the lesson.

This means the user can read through the steps, have a go at the example and then put their skills to the test with a similar style practice question.

We also provide a comprehensive set of GCSE maths past papers.

All questions are self-marking so that the user can receive instant feedback on their work. 

We have designed our practice questions to include 4 multiple choice answers, three of which will highlight commonly held misconceptions.

When a question is selected, the correct answer is displayed along with a brief explanation of why that answer is correct. This is to help the user understand where they have gone wrong if they have made a mistake, and provide a deeper level of understanding if the question has been answered correctly.

GCSE exam-style questions

After having a good practice, and exploring all of the misconceptions in action, it is now time for the user to test their understanding with the on-page GCSE exam-style questions.

All of our exam questions have been written by our team of expert maths teachers and examiners. They come complete with an easy-to-use, student-friendly mark scheme, which is revealed once clicked.

The mark scheme provides a breakdown of how each mark is awarded. This allows the user to accurately assess their current knowledge and crucially enables them to learn from their mistakes.

Next lessons

We end each lesson with the next related lessons a student should follow. This means that the user can easily navigate to the next topic to further their understanding of GCSE mathematics.

Downloadable worksheets and exam questions

Each lesson also comes complete with a set of downloadable GCSE maths worksheets split into three sections.

Section 1: skill-based practice

The first section focuses on key skills and is split into around three groups of questions. These questions often follow variation theory and mirror the examples presented on the online lesson pages.

When used in a classroom setting, this skill-based practice provides plenty of opportunities for students to work independently at their own level while being continually challenged. They are designed to be easily printed and chopped up to support differentiation and also include a full set of answers.

Section 2: applied practice

The second section introduces questions that require the students to apply their knowledge to a variety of contexts in the form of worded problems and problem-solving questions.

Here, students can begin to develop a deeper understanding of the topic as they start to apply their knowledge. Again, all questions come complete with a full set of solutions.

Section 3: foundation and higher exam-style questions

The third section contains a variety of foundation and higher level exam-style questions, which are suitable for GCSE maths revision for AQA, OCR and Edexcel exam boards.

Each question comes with a detailed student-friendly mark scheme, clearly explaining how each mark is awarded.

How to use our online maths lessons and worksheets

Below are some ideas about how our free online lessons and worksheets can be used to support excellent teaching and learning in GCSE maths.

Flipped learning

Set the students a Third Space Learning online lesson as part of their pre-class preparation. Encourage students to make notes from the explanations and examples, taking particular note of the summaries on the flip cards. 

The students should attempt the self-marking diagnostic practice questions and record their answers. To really challenge themselves, they could then try an exam question. This allows the student to arrive at the classroom with an understanding of the topic and gives the teacher the opportunity and space to really explore the topic in greater depth.

Next steps 

Following an in-class lesson, direct the students to the corresponding Third Space Learning online lesson as part of a consolidation or homework activity. Following an assessment, help the students to make a list of their areas for development, then direct them to our online lessons to help support their revision.

In-class differentiation 

As part of a revision lesson, direct the majority of the class to one of the main Third Space Learning online hub pages such as ‘Laws of indices’. Here, they can independently work through a series of interconnected lessons focusing on their particular areas of development, which will achieve a more general understanding of how the different areas link together.

This will also allow the classroom teacher and/or the teaching assistant to work with smaller targeted groups of students. Our easily differentiated worksheets are designed to provide full coverage of a topic (if used as a whole) or to be chopped up and distributed to targeted groups of students.

Intervention

As part of an intervention programme, invite those students who are not receiving Third Space Learning online tuition for maths to use lessons or after school sessions to work through a specific selection of free online maths lessons.

Continual professional development

Encourage non-specialist staff members in the school (or parents who wish to support students with their school work) to access the online lessons and resources. Remember, maths is for everyone! No matter what stage of life we are at, we can all increase our mathematical confidence.

More free GCSE content coming soon

With more and more content being added weekly, we will soon have mapped out the entire GCSE maths curriculum, featuring exciting new types of resources in development by our team of expert maths teachers.

With the right support, everyone can do maths, and Third Space Learning is here to help!

Read more: The Most Impactful GCSE Maths Topics Your Year 10 And Year 11 Should Revise For Their Foundation Exam

Do you have students who need extra support in maths?
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Since 2013 we’ve helped over 130,000 primary and secondary students become more confident, able mathematicians. Find out more about our GCSE Maths tuition or request a personalised quote for your school to speak to us about your school’s needs and how we can help.

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