MATHS

NAVIGATING YEAR 7 MATHS

We are now halfway through term 1 and our new Year 7s have had a steep learning curve to settle into secondary school. Every subject brings with it a different teacher, routines and expectations.

In maths they have had to navigate among other things:

1. Organising themselves to bring all the required equipment to class – notes and workbooks, calculator, ruler, pens and pencils and their textbook.

2. Understanding the layout of their textbook, both the physical copy and the online program.

3. How to organise their workbook and set out their work correctly.

4. Added to all this has been finding the appropriate strategy to come out on top in a Blooket! (Don’t know what this is? Ask a Year 7.)

Moreover of course there was some mathematical concepts and skills to discuss, practice and consolidate. Fortunately, there is evidence that they have coped with this transition exceptionally well and even had some fun!

Emma Mullane

Key Learning Area Manager - Mathematics

This term in maths, we’ve covered a lot already! We started by revising the four basic operations, BODMAS, and learning the divisibility tests for numbers. Next, we explored factors, multiples, prime and composite numbers, as well as indices and the six index laws. Building on our understanding of factor trees and indices, we mastered calculating the HCF and LCM of numbers through prime factorisation. Most recently, we’ve been studying positive and negative integers. Maths has been a lot of fun, and I’m excited to learn even more as the term progresses!

Rebecca Xie, Year 7

The introduction to maths at McKinnon SC has been a reasonably smooth transition. It's been more challenging but in a good way as it makes you think a lot more. The classes are more engaging as we are taking lots of notes which in my opinion provides an additional way to remember what you do in class.

In the short time that I've been at McKinnon, we've covered a lot of concepts like the index laws and prime factorisation as well as positive and negative integers. Using the prime factorisation we learnt how to get the HCF, LCM and square/cube root.

Some of my favourite things in maths is how rules explain everything so you can learn the basic principles and add to it and be able to do more complicated maths.

If I could give advice to someone starting high school maths I would say don't be intimidated and do your homework, if you don't understand something find the basics that make up what you're learning and study it or just ask your teacher.

Taku Ramensky, Year 7