Year 8 Maths

Unit Content
Unit 1 Proportional Reasoning

This unit, focused on proportional reasoning, develops students' knowledge and skills in relation to ratio and scale, multiplicative change, and multiplying and dividing fractions.

Key skills developed:

  • How to understand and use ratio notation
  • How to express a ratio in its simplest form
  • How to divide a value in a given ratio
  • How to solve problems involving direct proportion
  • How to use conversion graphs
  • How to understand scale factors as multiplicative representations
  • How to divide any pair of fractions
  • How to use the reciprocal

Assessment: Students undertake self-assessment and receive verbal feedback from the teacher each lesson. Summative assessment takes place at the end of the unit. In addition, students complete twice-yearly summative assessments which assess their retention of several units.

Unit 2 Representations

Students learn to work in the Cartesian plane, about representations of data, and about working with tables and probability.

Key skills developed:

  • How to recognise coordinates and lines that are parallel to the x and y axes
  • How to recognise and use lines in the form y=x+a
  • How to draw and interpret a scatter graph
  • How to describe linear correlation
  • How to complete a two-way table
  • How to construct a sample space
  • How to find probabilities from a two-way table

Assessment: Students undertake self-assessment and receive verbal feedback from the teacher each lesson. Summative assessment takes place at the end of the unit. In addition, students complete twice-yearly summative assessments which assess their retention of several units.

Unit 3 Algebraic Techniques

In this unit, students learn about brackets, equations and inequalities. They develop their knowledge and skills in working confidently with sequences and indices.

Key skills developed:

  • How to use directed number with algebra
  • How to multiply out a single bracket
  • How to factorise into a single bracket
  • How to form and solve equations and inequalities
  • How to identify and use formulae, expressions, identities and equations
  • How to generate sequences given a simple algebraic rule
  • How to find the nth term of a linear sequence
  • How to add and subtract expressions with indices

Assessment: Students undertake self-assessment and receive verbal feedback from the teacher each lesson. Summative assessment takes place at the end of the unit. In addition, students complete twice-yearly summative assessments which assess their retention of several units.

Unit 4 Developing Number

This unit focuses on deepening students' understanding of fractions and percentages. Students build their understanding of standard index form and their ability to understand, relate and connect numbers.

Key skills developed:

  • How to convert fluently between key fractions, decimals and percentages
  • How to calculate fractions, decimals and percentages of an amount using a calculator
  • How to decrease an amount by a percentage using a multiplier
  • How to investigate positive powers of ten
  • How to work with numbers greater than 1 in standard form
  • How to round numbers to a given number of decimal places
  • How to estimate the answer to a calculation by rounding numbers to one significant figure

Assessment: Students undertake self-assessment and receive verbal feedback from the teacher each lesson. Summative assessment takes place at the end of the unit. In addition, students complete twice-yearly summative assessments which assess their retention of several units.

Unit 5 Developing Geometry

The fifth unit enables students to work with angles in parallel lines and in polygons. Students learn about the area of trapezia and circles and about working with lines of symmetry and reflection.

Key skills developed:

  • How to calculate angles between parallel lines
  • How to construct triangles
  • How to identify and calculate angles in triangles and quadrilaterals
  • How to calculate the area of triangles, rectangles and parallelograms
  • How to calculate the perimeter and area of compound shapes
  • How to reflect shapes in horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines

Assessment: Students undertake self-assessment and receive verbal feedback from the teacher each lesson. Summative assessment takes place at the end of the unit. In addition, students complete twice-yearly summative assessments which assess their retention of several units.

Unit 6 Reasoning with Data

The final unit of Year 8 develops students' understanding of the data handling cycle and of measures of location.

Key skills developed:

  • How to draw and interpret pictograms, bar charts and vertical line charts
  • How to interpret pie charts
  • How to find and interpret the range of a set of data
  • How to compare distributions using charts
  • How to understand and use the mean, median and mode
  • How to choose the most appropriate average
  • How to identify outliers
  • How to compare distributions using averages and the range

Assessment: Students undertake self-assessment and receive verbal feedback from the teacher each lesson. Summative assessment takes place at the end of the unit. In addition, students complete twice-yearly summative assessments which assess their retention of several units.