Year 7 maths: what your child learns
As your budding mathematician moves up to secondary school and starts KS3 maths, what new skills will they learn?
KS3 maths is usually taught in ability sets: this means the more able children will be stretched, while children who struggle with maths will take things more slowly, and be given more support.
Your child will find some of the work similar to primary school, but it will be more challenging and the children are expected to be working more independently.
With all the topics the children will be studying, they’ll be developing ‘mathematical process’ skills, which include reasoning, analysis and evaluation.
Y7 maths – your child will be learning from the following topics:
Numbers
- Decimal notation and place value
- Comparing decimals
- Rounding whole numbers and decimals
- Positioning negative numbers on a number line
- Understanding integers
- Highest common factors and lowest common multiples
- The squares of numbers up to 12x12 and their roots
- Simplifying fractions
- Adding and subtracting fractions
- Calculating percentages
- Ratio and proportion
- Calculations with brackets
- Solving problems using mental maths and calculators
Preparing for Y7 maths at home
- If your child has a mobile phone, set them the task of finding the best tariff
- Encourage your child to look out for percentages: in a newspaper, in shops, or on adverts for credit cards
- Practise maths when you’re out shopping or in a restaurant – get your child to add up prices, work out how much you can save on special offers, and estimate the total bill
- If your child enjoys maths and wants to be stretched, ask if your school has a maths club
Algebra
- Using letters to represent numbers
- Simplifying equations
- Solving simple equations
- Number sequences
- Input, output and mapping diagrams
- Plotting graphs using coordinates
Geometry and measures
- Recognising parallel and perpendicular lines
- Calculating the sum of angles on a point, triangle and straight line
- Using the correct geometrical terms
- Geometrical problems using triangles and quadrilaterals
- Reflections, rotations and translations of 2D shapes
- Symmetry of a 2D shape
- Finding coordinates of points
- Using a ruler and protractor to draw accurate lines, angles and triangles, and construct 3D shapes
- Estimating and calculating problems involving measuring
- Converting metric units
- Estimating the size of acute, obtuse and reflex angles
- Learning the formula for calculating the area of a rectangle
- Surface area of cubes and cuboids
Statistics
- Collecting data from surveys and experiments
- Designing questionnaires to collect data
- Creating frequency tables
- Calculating statistics
- Finding the mode, median and mean
- Creating and interpreting graphs, pie charts and diagrams showing data, on paper and using ICT
- Writing a statistical report
- Understanding probability terms such as likely, unlikely, impossible, probably
- Estimating probability from a simple experiment
- Comparing probabilities
Give your child a headstart
- FREE articles & expert information
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