GCSE Maths - Year 1 Week 10
Week 10: Proportion, Best Buys, Scale & Unit Week 10 - Conversion
This week puts ratio to work in real-world contexts: scaling recipes up and down, working out which supermarket deal is actually cheaper, reading and creating scale drawings, and converting between units of measurement. These are some of the most genuinely useful skills in the whole course.
Same shape as always: warm-up, teach, practice (Foundation, Intermediate or Higher — pick one), mark, exit ticket.
Monday — Direct Proportion & the Unitary Method
What you're learning: What it means for two quantities to be in direct proportion (they scale up and down together), and the unitary method, scaling down to "one unit" first, then scaling back up, as a reliable way to solve these problems.
Warm-up (5 min): Transum — Ratio, mixed levels — recall of last week.
Teach (10 min):
The unitary method: if 5 pens cost £3, first find the cost of 1 pen (÷5), then multiply to find the cost of however many you actually need.
Practice (20 min): Pick one path:
Foundation: Transum — Unitary Method, Level 1.
Intermediate: Maths Genie — Proportion (Ingredients), one worksheet.
Higher: Corbett Maths — Unitary Method Textbook Exercise, the later/harder questions, plus Transum — Unitary Method, a harder level.
Mark & fix: Check, correct, and note why for anything you got wrong.
Exit ticket: If 8 identical chocolate bars cost £6.40, how much would 5 bars cost? Show the unitary method step clearly.
Tuesday — Best Buys
What you're learning: How to compare the value for money of different-sized products by working out a unit price (cost per gram, per litre, and so on), genuinely useful the next time you're actually in a supermarket.
Warm-up (5 min): Corbett Maths 5-a-day (GCSE) — general mixed recall.
Teach (10 min):
Practice (20 min): Pick one path:
Foundation: Transum — Best Buys, the introductory questions.
Intermediate: Corbett Maths — Best Buys Practice Questions, one page.
Higher: Corbett Maths — Best Buys (the longer piece) plus Transum — Best Buys, the harder real-world questions.
Mark & fix: As before — always double-check your unit price is genuinely comparable (same unit, e.g. both per 100g), since mixing units is the most common mistake here.
Exit ticket: A 400g jar of coffee costs £4.80. A 650g jar costs £7.15. Which is better value? Show your working.
Wednesday — Scale Drawings and Maps
What you're learning: How to read and create scale drawings, and how to use a map scale to convert between a distance on paper and a real-world distance.
Warm-up (5 min): Transum — Best Buys, a couple of quick questions — recall of yesterday.
Teach (10 min): Watch:
A scale like 1:25,000 means 1 unit on the map represents 25,000 of the same unit in real life, so the ratio skills from earlier this unit apply directly here.
Practice (20 min): Pick one path:
Foundation: Maths Genie — Scale Drawings, the first few questions only.
Intermediate: Corbett Maths — Scales and Maps Practice Questions, one page.
Higher: Corbett Maths — Scales and Maps Practice Questions, the later, harder questions, plus creating your own scale drawing of a room in your house using a scale you choose.
Mark & fix: As before.
Exit ticket: A map has a scale of 1:50,000. Two towns are 6cm apart on the map. What is the real distance, in kilometres?
Thursday — Unit Conversion (Metric & Imperial)
What you're learning: How to convert confidently between metric units (millimetres to metres, grams to kilograms, millilitres to litres), and between metric and imperial units for measurements you'll meet in everyday life.
Warm-up (5 min): Corbett Maths — Maps and Scales — a couple of quick recall questions from yesterday's scale work, since converting units is really the same skill applied differently.
Teach (10 min):
Practice (20 min): Pick one path:
Foundation: Corbett Maths — Metric Units Videos, working through the shorter individual topic videos and their built-in questions.
Intermediate: Corbett Maths — Metric Units, one page.
Higher: Corbett Maths — Metric Units, the later questions, plus a self-set challenge: convert a recipe's ingredients from metric to imperial and check your answers against a reliable conversion chart.
Mark & fix: As before — a good check for conversion questions is asking "does this answer even make sense?" (e.g. a person's height of 1700 metres is obviously wrong), which catches a lot of decimal-point errors.
Exit ticket: Convert 3.4 kg into grams, and 2500 ml into litres. Show your working for both.
Friday — Consolidation
Today's not about new content, it's about locking in this week's ideas.
Quiz (10–15 min): Transum — Best Buys and Transum — Unitary Method, mixed, for a recap of the whole week.
Weekend printable : MEP Year 8 Practice Book — Unit 7: Ratio and Proportion (PDF), 7.2 and 7.4.
End-of-week reflection (5 min): In your notebook, answer:
Which topic this week felt most solid?
Which topic do you want to see again before we move on?
Rate your confidence 1–5 on: direct proportion/unitary method, best buys, scale drawings and maps, unit conversion.
Keep this reflection — we'll circle back to anything you flagged as shaky in the mixed-review session at the end of Unit 3 (Week 11).
Next week: The final week of Unit 3 — mixed ratio and proportion problem solving, a self-directed review, and the Unit 3 assessment.
