C1 and progress towards S.T.E.P and A.E.A

To be honest, I think it would be more productive to go through existing STEP / AEA questions and categorize what modules of knowledge are required.

I am also somewhat wary about your plan of offering "very hard" questions - in the past, this has usually ended up with people posting questions way harder than anything you would get in STEP, which is not terribly helpful to people just starting out.

By all means give it a go and prove me wrong though.

I can see this just being BMO questions which dont really require anything beyond gcse. However, i would also like to see this as if you can make STEP like questions on an early syllabus then i commend that. Its a nice idea, just dont know if it will work out.

Perhaps post the first paper youve madr and then we could critique it?

My personal suggestion (not a criticism of what you're attempting, particularly) is that if students want more challenging questions, then it might be worthwhile directing them towards existing MAT papers. The MAT assumes no more than C2 knowledge, so I'd expect there to be some questions in there that are just C1 knowledge plus a bit of lateral thinking.

Also, if a student is finding C1 a total breeze, would it not be better to get them to start looking at some C2 material where they'll begin to learn some useful techniques (as opposed to C1 which is basically just GCSE A* material "with knobs on"!)?

This sounds very similar to Solomon Papers, I believe they are also for the more A/A* level. Here's a link to the C1 papers : http://papers.xtremepapers.com/Edexcel/Advanced%20Level/Mathematics/Subject%20Sorted/C1/Solomon/

I think papers geared more at problem solving and lateral thinking rather than rote process applying would be needed in preparation for STEP/AEA.
Posted from TSR Mobile

Before I attach the papers I want to say a few things because from some of the comments I received I concluded maybe I have not explained what this practice papers are all about.

These Papers, …
…have no problem solving genres no maths challenge stuff, IMO etc
…have no similarity to STEP in structure or style.
…do not resemble an AEA paper either

These papers…
… follow the structure and style of a standard EDEXCEL C1 paper
… “look like” a standard EDEXCEL C1 paper until you try them.


My objective is to give “C1 topical practice” to EDEXCEL (and why not other boards) candidates. My experience shows that very few students attempt hard questions until the second year of the mathematics A levels. One could argue this is probably better as they have higher mathematical maturity by then. Nevertheless there are sometimes exceptions.


IMPORTANT
Do not pay too much attention to the time allowed (not checked yet)
Proper marks allocation is not done either, individually or as a total! (I need to moderate, produce solutions and then marking scheme, before a sensible mark allocation is determined).


c1_s.pdf



This is where these two papers fit into my full package of papers.

For the Edexcel Syllabus I set 2 years ago to create 26 papers A to Z, one for each letter of the alphabet, for the popular core modules C1, C2, C3 and C4.

Papers A to R were designed for “general student consumption”.
(Some easy and occasionally hard)

Papers U to Z were designed for “mathematical heavyweights”.
(The response I had from those papers when tried with “standard” students was OMG, but with strong students OK)

Papers S and T were missing. (a bad word play on STep)
I designed these for “mathematical Sumos”, i.e. even harder than U to Z.

I have no idea what the response will be, but it is certainly no waste as I will certainly find use with some of my own students.

I hope you find them useful. Any comments welcome



[PS1: please help with obvious typos or problems, as I knocked those in a big hurry]
[PS2: I have no idea how soon I will be able to provide solutions/very busy at present]
[PS3: For at least two months C1, IYGB, paper S and T are only available through the Student Room!]
[PS4: …erm Playstation4]

..

On a quick read through, you've said in the last question that (1,1) is a minimum. I assume you meant maximum.

Paper

Some comments based on a fairly quick look through.

Q6: Possibly I'm being stupid, but it's not totally obvious to me what you mean by "The curve meets the y axis at y =18 but has no x intercepts.". (in particular, does x intercepts mean "meets the x axis", or "meets the line x = 0"). I suspect it would become clear once doing the question but I don't think the ambiguity is good.

Q7: I really don't like this question - I'm left thinking "OK, now I don't know what I can assume." E.g. can I assume that "if I start on one line, travel in a perpendicular direction to that line until I reach the other line, then the distance travelled is the shortest distance"?

In general, I felt you overused things like "show clearly" - unless there's a very good reason for such a phrase I think it's one best avoided.

In terms of difficulty, I felt it was a fair bit easier than AEA (let alone STEP).

Looks like a good paper although not as hard as I thought it was going to be.

One mistake I noticed: you're missing an $x\in \mathbb{R}$ for q3.

i will correct

Not as difficult as i thought u might make it but thats a good thing. Its nice because theres not long slogs of algebra but just non-standard questions which dont rely on any advanced topics.you dont really need to think about them, but i think for the intended audience of strong year 12 mathematicians it fits the bill.

Nice job. Have you thought about extending this to other modules where you dont need alot of specialist knowledge and they dont really scratch beyond the surfacex say FP1?

I know you said you havent given much thought to a time limit. But 3 hours is certainly excessive. I just completed full solutions to the whole paper in less than an hour. Perhaps 1 hr30 as with Alevel papers is more appropriate