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What is it?
A mistake I have made many times in my career is to not expose my students to the full scope of a concept; I would focus my teaching on the basics. Maybe those who finished the work early would be exposed to some extension work with a few twists and turns in there, but many students would miss out on this and crucially I would not be offering up much support. My job was to focus on the basics. It was very clear where my priorities lay. The problem, of course, is that with the ramped up demands of the current GCSE specification, twists and turns are becoming the norm. Topics are being combined in ways we have not seen before, and if our students are not prepared for this, they may well come a cropper.

These are 8 fiendishly difficult questions all of which use the equation of circle and they are they are very challenging and intertwine topics such as trig, solving non-linear simultaneous equations, equation of tangents and more! Thankfully, pbrucemaths has provided the answers with this great resource.

How can it be used?
The key to this resource is to support students through it, this should not be extension work for the few. Used well, this resource can also be used to help revise all the other topics and concepts that are contained within the circle questions.

So, having taught the basics of the equation of a circle, I may give out a selection of these questions to students, possibly asking them to work in pairs ensuring I am on hand to explicitly model the solution as and when needed. This would be a focus of the lesson, and not an add-on for just a few of my students.

Thanks for sharing!
Craig Barton

Download: Equation of a circle
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