Exams 2013 - what you need to get

With exams approaching fast, it is crucial you have an idea of what marks you will need in the exams to achieve the grade you want.

(If any of these calculators or resources stop working, can you please let me know by following this link).

Year 10:

You are doing GCSE Statistics this year.  Once you have your Controlled Assessment mark you can use This Calculator to work out what mark you need in the exam, for your target grade.

[If you are in Mr Smy's S1 class, use the A level links below...]

Year 11:

Your Unit 2 resits marks arrive in school on Thursday 18th April.  Once you know all of that you can use This Calculator to work out what you need in the final exam.

[If you are also doing Linear GCSE, then you can find the grade boundaries for Higher Tier here, and for Foundation tier here].

Year 12 and 13:

The grade boundaries, UMS converters, and AS/ A level calculators are all still on this site here.

Year 8 Item Exchange PSHEE

Another frantic PSHEE day from the Economic well being team has seen students buying and selling resources, before producing an advertising campaign for products as diverse as Mr Men Biscuits, Mouthwash and Hair Gel!

With points available in equal measure for both the creativity of the pitch, and the accuracy of the account keeping there were a range of skills being learnt and tested.

Here are the team scores!
This was also a house competition, and the house scores are...

Massive congratulations all round, for a fantastic day. If you took part in the day, why not leave a comment saying which bit you enjoyed the most? If you won, what do you think the key strategy was?

Year 9 Guided choices

Thursday 21st February is the Y9 guided choices evening.

Here is our presentation about GCSE Maths, Statistics, and Functional Maths.

Questions?  Talk to Mr Smy, Mr Darton, or your Maths teacher.

Maths Challenges

It has been a busy week for Maths students.

On Tuesday February 5^th eight intrepid year 7 set off for a Maths Challenge day at St Mary’s School.  There were teams from secondary schools across Wiltshire, and here is what our students have said about the day.

“The day was fun and interesting; the maths was very challenging” – Sanna Seager (7BB – Kerry)

“I particularly enjoyed the crossword puzzle – we really needed good teamwork”  Matt Evans (7BT – Shelbourne)

“The whole day was really good, but I especially enjoyed the reley, working as a team to get the answers” – Amber Barrett (7BE – Fitzmaurice)

“The entire day was good, and it made us realise how much more maths there is to learn” – John Cook (7BE – Shelbourne)

“It was a really good day, and I particularly enjoyed the relay” – Harriet Brown (7BE – Fitzmaurice)

“I really had fun working as a team” – Leah Kent (7BN – Shelbourne)

“I was disappointed we didn’t win, but am really proud of how hard we worked and tried” – Adam Richards (7BE – Lansdowne)

“It was a fun day, and it was great to work against lots of new schools”  Molly Shearsby (7BE – Lansdowne)

Mrs Willoughby took the teams over the St Marys, and was very impressed with their behaviour, determination and effort.  A level Mathematicians Mike Willkins and Lydia West also went with them, and were similarly impressed, with Lydia commenting “the maths they were asked to do was really challenging!”


Thursday saw 59 students from Y9 and Y10 take part in the UK Intermediate Maths Challenge.  More details about that when the results are in.

Trig Graphs

You can use this applet to drag point C around the circle, and will be able to see how the points P and Q move.  If you right click on P or Q and "Show Trace" it will leave a path behind.

TrigTrace This is a Java Applet created using GeoGebra from www.geogebra.org - it looks like you don't have Java installed, please go to www.java.com C Smy, 23 January 2013, Created with GeoGebra

Snow Day 18th Jan 2013

School is shut today due to the weather (Snow Day!), but the S1 and S2 exam is still on for y12/13 (and the y11 RS exam).
The exams start at 1pm and there will be hot choc / tea / coffee available in the canteen from 12:30.  Mr Darton will be there to resiter you.

If you are revising this morning, I am around on email, or on twitter (@jbsmaths).

Good luck this afternoon.

Year 11 module results

Year 11 you have got your module results today (Thursday Jan 10th).  The score on your results sheet will be a number (called UMS), and it will be helpful to you to convert this into a grade.

Here is the table that converts a UMS into a (decimalised) grade (it is the same scale for the unit 1 score you got last year).  (To open the table in a new window, Click here).

Calculator You can use our Grade calculator to give you an idea of what you need to get in the summer exam. Click here to find it.  (This calculator can get quite busy, and sometimes breaks - please bear with it and let Mr Smy know if it is giving silly or completely wrong values!) Your maths teacher will talk to you over the next couple of weeks to work out the plan for moving forward, and achieving the highest possible grade for each of you.