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Help students go beyond recalling information and teach them to apply concepts. By starting to practise the strategy of 'Detect, Recall and Solve' from year 7, they will become expert at solving problems by GCSE. This book contains hundreds of questions and covers all the concepts in year 7 of the 5-year plan (Blueprint).

Powerful strategy for Apply questions (GCSE Asssessment Objective 2) 
The problems in the book are training in how to apply concepts to unfamiliar situations, for future GCSE AO2 questions. They teach a general strategy for solving problems: Detect, Recall, Solve - see below - analysing the question, recognising the critical knowledge, and putting together a logical answer. Each problem also teaches a concept specific strategy: when to use a particular concept (in Detect), what it's critical elements are (in Recall) and how to use them. 

Specially designed problems The problems are not merely past paper questions with a worked answer. They are specifically designed as examples of the different kinds of problems students will get - so that students become familiar with all the challenges.

Masses of challenging practice to deepen understanding. The wealth of 'your turn' questions helps students go beyond recalling of knowledge, and practise using it in a variety of applications. They start easy and become progressively less familiar, and vary the information, to support students through to independence, and prepare students for whatever kinds of questions will appear in an exam. There are hints as well as answers. 

Research-based approaches
We use carefully worked examples to show how an expert tackles the problem, broken down into small steps. Talk boxes to the side of the text encourage students to 'self-explain', a proven strategy to increase understanding of the thinking involved. After the example, the first 'your turn' question is identical in structure to make it easy for students to follow the steps, before proceeding to more challenging questions.

Builds confidence to tackle exam questions. Many students give up when faced with a difficult exam question. The book shows students they can do it. It breaks down the process, gives lots of scaffolding and gradually builds their skills towards independence.

How can you use it?

✔ Class tasks and plenaries
✔ Homework
✔ Small group intervention on weak concepts
✔ Revision

What's in the book?

✔ Covers all key concepts in each year
✔ Clear, easy to follow and interesting worked examples
✔ 100's of carefully crafted your turn questions
✔ Hints and answers

How does it work?

Many students miss out on the 60% of marks for applying and analysing in new GCSE. They find it difficult to figure out unfamiliar situations. Past papers give practice but don't help students learn the deep structure of problems, nor how to solve problems systematically. The Mastery Practice Book series teaches all students to apply knowledge. Firmly grounded in cognitive science, it uses a  3-step approach to problem-solving explained through worked examples. with carefully guided practice to make students confident with whatever examiners ask.

The first page of each problem is a clear and visually explained worked example. It shows students a 3-step process for successfully solving unfamiliar questions:

• Detect: work out what you need to do to answer the question
• Recall: bring to mind all the relevant knowledge
• Solve: go step-by-step from what you know to the solution

The second page is a set of 'your turn' questions to try. The first is similar to the example to check that students can follow the thinking. Further questions are carefully crafted as stepping stones to build their competence and confidence. There are hints to get students unstuck, and answers at the back.

At the end of a chapter, students are ready for the 'mixed up problem' challenge. Like in an examination, several types of problems are mixed together, but now students have learned the skills of recognising which knowledge to use in each situation.