Return to Underground Mathematics Menu
For GCSE students there are many resources on Underground Mathematics which could be used or adapted. Working on these problems is ideal for students aiming for the highest grades. There are many Underground Mathematics Resource Types. One particularly useful type to look at when searching for GCSE Resources is the Review Questions which in the words of the Underground Maths Team:
These are questions designed to test students’ understanding of one or more topics and to exercise their problem-solving skills. In many cases they can also be used as a classroom resource to help teach concepts and methods. They are mostly drawn from past examination questions and have been chosen as ones that are interesting in nature and require non-routine thinking. The hints and solutions are designed to explain the reasoning and highlight connections as well as giving the answer. In many cases, alternative methods or solutions are presented.
Read about the use of Review questions in the classroom on this Teacher Support page.
You can browse all the Review questions or narrow your search by question type; note the O/AO-level questions which are questions from old papers. One can also search by line ( Number, Geometry, Algebra, Functions or Calcuus) and by Station.
If you create an account you can easily save and organise your favourite resources. Your This list of favourites can be easily downloaded as a csv file.
To further organise your favourites you can create subcollections.
I have several Algebra favourites for GCSE. This Excel file has hyperlinks to all the resources shown here. algebra-gcse-9-1
I see so many questions that will provide appropriate challenge for GCSE students. For example:
Can we fully factorise x4+4y4?
Starts with a Show that….
And then we factorise and will need to recall the difference of two squares.
We could get very sophisticated and look at those quadratic factors too; useful for those studying the Level 2 Further Mathematics Qualification.
Can we simplify these algebraic fractions?
Review algebraic fractions, simplifcation including the difference of two squares and quadratic equations. We could of course also talk about functions (including domain and range as these students are also studyling AQA’s Level 2 Further Mathematics)
Can we simplify these simultaneous equations of degree 1 and 2?
Solve simultaneous equations, we’ll need simplification of algebraic fractions again and we can talk about the graphical solution of equations. We will also need to factorise a quadratic, 3y2−y−80 with a coefficient which is not 1 for the square term. We have all decided we are fans of the Box Method!
You can also search on the Line and the Station to narrow your search; you can also save and categorise your favourites by creating a (free) account.