GCSE Maths - Year 1 Week 4
- Sallyann Clark
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
Week 4: Rounding, Estimation, Systematic Listing & Unit 1 Assessment
This is the last week of Unit 1: rounding, estimation, and a first look at systematic listing strategies, followed by a self-directed review and the Unit 1 assessment. By the end of this week you should feel genuinely solid on non-calculator arithmetic, factors and primes, powers and roots, and BIDMAS — the foundation everything else in this course builds on.
Same shape as previous weeks: warm-up, teach, practice (Foundation, Intermediate or Higher, pick one), mark, exit ticket.
Monday — Rounding
What you're learning: How to round numbers to a given number of decimal places or significant figures, a skill you'll use constantly, especially for estimating and checking calculator answers.
Warm-up (5 min): Corbett Maths 5-a-day (GCSE)
Teach (10 min): Watch:
Practice (20 min): Pick one path:
Foundation: Transum — Rounding to Decimal Places.
Intermediate: Corbett Maths — Rounding Practice plus Sig Figs Practice spend ten mins on each set, the questions get harder, so start where you feel comfortable.
Higher: Transum — Rounding to Significant Figures, harder levels, plus Corbett Maths — Significant Figures (mixed word problems), which moves past straight rounding into exam-style worded questions.
Mark & fix: Check, correct, and note why for anything you got wrong.
Exit ticket: Round 47.2648 to (a) 1 decimal place, (b) 3 significant figures. Explain the difference between the two.
Tuesday — Estimation
What you're learning: How to quickly approximate the answer to a calculation by rounding each number first. It is a genuinely useful real-world skill, and a good way to sanity-check a calculator answer.
Warm-up (5 min): Topmarks — Rocket Rounding — recall of yesterday's rounding.
Teach (10 min): Watch:
Practice (20 min): Pick one path:
Foundation: Transum — Rough Answers, early questions.
Intermediate: Corbett Maths — Estimation Practice Questions, one page.
Higher: Corbett Maths — Estimation Textbook Exercise (the longer piece, real-life worded problems) plus Transum — Rough Answers — the Fermi Problem and Breathe Easily challenges.
Mark & fix: As before.
Exit ticket: Estimate the answer to 19.8 × 5.1 by rounding each number to 1 significant figure first. Then check with an exact calculation: how close was your estimate?
Wednesday — Systematic Listing Strategies
What you're learning: How to list every possible outcome of a situation methodically, without missing any or repeating any, a skill that underpins probability later in the course.
Warm-up (5 min): Corbett Maths 5-a-day (GCSE)
Teach (10 min): Watch:
Practice (20 min): Pick one path:
Foundation: Transum — Systematic Listing Strategies, basic levels.
Intermediate: Corbett Maths — Listing Outcomes Practice Questions, one page.
Higher: Corbett Maths — Listing Outcomes Textbook Exercise (the longer piece, includes product-rule questions) plus Transum — Systematic Listing Strategies, harder levels.
Mark & fix: As before — for listing questions, if your answer is wrong it's almost always because something was missed or double-counted, so recount carefully rather than just re-reading your list.
Exit ticket: A café sells 3 types of sandwich and 2 types of drink. List every possible sandwich-and-drink combination, then explain how you made sure you found them all.
Thursday — Unit 1 Mixed Review
Today is self-directed. There's no new content, instead, go back through your Week 1–3 reflections and pick out whichever topics you rated lowest.
Warm-up (5 min): Corbett Maths 5-a-day (GCSE), mixed.
Review (30 min):
Re-watch whichever teaching video from Weeks 1–3 felt weakest.
Revisit whichever practice tier (Foundation, Intermediate or Higher) felt hardest at the time on that topic.
If nothing specific stands out, use Khan Academy — Arithmetic to pick areas you feel need working on.
Exit ticket: Write down the two topics from Unit 1 you feel least confident about. Be specific, not "negative numbers" but "multiplying two negative numbers together."
Friday — Unit 1 Assessment
Assessment: Download and complete the assessment questions.
Marking: You can download the answers to the assessments from the planning page. DO not download them until you have completed the assessment.
Log for later: Write down 2–3 topics to revisit during the interleaving weeks later in the course, so nothing from Unit 1 gets permanently forgotten once we move on.
Next week: Unit 2 begins; Algebra Foundations, starting with algebraic notation, simplifying expressions, and substitution.
