Happy Home Education

This week puts ratio to work in real-world contexts: scaling recipes with direct proportion, working out which supermarket deal is actually better value, reading scale drawings and maps, and converting between units of measurement — some of the most genuinely useful skills in the whole course.

Unit 3 begins: Ratio & Proportion. This week covers what ratio actually means, how to simplify it, share an amount using one, and solve problems when you're only given part of the picture — genuinely practical maths that shows up everywhere from recipes to exchange rates.

Week 6 takes last week's multiplying skills and applies them to brackets — expanding by multiplying everything inside a bracket, then the reverse process, factorising. We finish by forming algebraic expressions from written descriptions, putting the whole week's skills to use.

Unit 2 begins: Algebra. This week covers the notation itself, simplifying expressions by collecting like terms, substitution, and multiplying/dividing terms — the same rules of arithmetic you already know, just written in a more general way. Same tiered format, warm-ups that build on what you already know.

The last week of Unit 1: rounding, estimation, and systematic listing, followed by a self-directed mixed review and the Unit 1 assessment. By the end of this week you should feel genuinely solid on everything from arithmetic to BIDMAS — the foundation the rest of the course builds on.

Week 3 moves into powers and roots — squares, cubes, and their opposites — before tying it all together with the order of operations (BIDMAS) and a first look at index laws. Same tiered format as before, with warm-ups that build on what you already know from the last two weeks.