Resources for Core Maths
23 January 2024
Ruth Wroe, OCR Maths Subject Advisor
This blog was originally published in May 2020 and has now been updated with additional resources and links.
As core maths is a relatively new qualification, it may not seem immediately obvious where to find resources. Whether you’re looking for practice exercises, interesting context-based lesson ideas, spreadsheet activities or tasks to recap prior learning, then this blog aims to provide a useful starting point.
Core Maths Platform
The Core Maths Platform, hosted by the Advanced Maths Support Programme (AMSP), is a one-stop shop for specification-specific core maths resources. To gain free access, register your school or college with the AMSP.
The AMSP site offers a comprehensive collection of lesson plans with presentations and teacher notes, along with associated student sheets and other materials covering the full content of the specifications. There are schemes of work, interactive resources, getting started activities for topic recaps and introducing spreadsheet work. Once registered, individual student accounts can be set up to enable tracking and monitoring of auto-marked assessments.
Advanced Mathematics Support Programme (AMSP)
The AMSP’s
core maths resources page not only hosts the Core Maths Platform, but also has an online self-study Core Maths Skills course and links to useful resource websites, summarised below:
- Cat Van Saarloos’s padlet, ‘Getting Started with Core Maths’, has a section on resources, including links to articles, quizzes, videos, radio programmes, books and events, plus a reminder to follow #coremaths on X (formerly Twitter) for useful updates.
- Mark Dawes blog, ‘Questions inspired by a news story’ (Quibans), has lots of news items to provoke mathematical questioning for context-based learning. The accompanying questions require students to use and interpret the quantities given in the item.
- What’s going on in this graph? and What the graph have graphs, maps and charts that can form lesson starters and classroom discussions.
- Core maths DESMOS classroom activities are useful for remote and flipped learning activities.
- Collections of core maths resources are provided by:
- More maths has interesting content to explore which is related to Core Maths from TED Talks, BBC Radio 4 More or Less podcasts and Gapminder video clips.
- Useful sites hosted by current core maths teachers include:
- Reflectivemaths’s blog, which has interesting posts on the experience of delivering core maths, including bridging work from year 11 and reading lists.
- TL Maths, which has some useful ‘basics’ videos suitable for all specifications, amongst a range of other resources.
The AMSP also supports teachers with a variety of online CPD provision throughout the academic year.
Mathematics Education Innovation (MEI)
Mathematics Education Innovation (MEI) have a free library of searchable resources which includes their Integrating Mathematical Problem Solving (IMPS) resources and Maths and Climate Change resources (both are signposted from the AMSP resource page too). They also have critical maths resources for Core Maths A and video clips covering spreadsheets skills for working with the Core Maths B dataset (also available under LDS video resources).
OCR Core Maths A and B (MEI) textbook
There is a dedicated textbook for OCR Core Maths A and B (MEI) with worked examples, activities to introduce new topics and practice exercises. It was written in conjunction with the MEI team and covers all components from both specifications.
A teacher companion to the textbook, providing additional questions and worked solutions, is available from the tutor section of the Core Maths Platform for the Core Maths A and B specifications.
OCR maths support
We have published free teaching resources on our secure Teach Cambridge website (talk with your exams officer about access) for each of our core maths qualifications that you can download from the ‘Teaching’ section of the Core Maths A and Core Maths B qualification pages.
Here you will find:
- Resource lists (located under planning) contain links to new and existing resources to help deliver the core maths specifications.
- Topic exploration packs (located under teaching delivery), which contain teaching notes and a selection of activities for a particular topic. Each one is accompanied by student sheets and answers.
- Teaching activities (located under teaching delivery), which are short teaching activities and worksheets.
- Mapping guides to other Level 3 subjects such as geography, biology, psychology and PE (located under new to this qualification).
Selecting ‘Assessment’ from the left-hand menu takes you to:
- Past papers and mark schemes as well as sample assessment material – the most recent are locked for teacher access only, so you can use them as mock assessments.
- Examiner reports, which give details of how students performed on each past paper, including common student mistakes and misconceptions.
- Candidate exemplars, which expand on the detail given in the examiner’s reports.
- Practice materials, which are past papers from our legacy qualification, Level 3 Certificate in Introduction to Quantitative Methods. Additional practice papers specifically written for Core Maths A and B are hosted on the Core Maths Platform.
- Pre-release materials and support for working with the Core Maths B dataset.
Stay connected
If you have any other resources you’d like to share, tell us about them in the comment box below.
If you have any questions, you may find the answer in our
FAQs or you can email us at
maths@ocr.org.uk, call us on 01223 553998 or message us on X
@OCR_Maths. You can also
sign up for email updates to receive information about resources and support.
About the author
Ruth supports the Level 3 maths qualifications and has chief responsibility for Core Maths A and B. She joined the maths team in 2014, working on the development of A Level Maths. Previously, Ruth taught maths in the UK, New Zealand, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. Outside of work she enjoys travelling, live music, real ale and dog walking.
By the same author