One of the things I find myself saying the most often to my students is “show your workings”. In fact, my students probably think I sound like a broken record. In an exam setting, not showing workings is a risky strategy. Often my students will say “but I got the right answer, so it doesn’t matter that I haven’t shown workings”. They aren’t wrong when they say this, but I try not to encourage this thinking. There are questions where you will receive full marks even in the absence of workings. In one-mark questions, there are no marks for workings. However, I always encourage my students to show workings, regardless of how the marks will be applied. It is good practice, and it makes it easier for them to follow their own thinking. There will be questions which request full workings. In such questions, a correct answer without workings will not gain method marks.
Have a look at the question below from November 2018.
In a question like this, many students will try to fast track to an answer and simply say yes or no. This will give rise to no marks, even if they are correct.
A bonus of £2100 is shared by 10 people who work for a company.
40% of the bonus is shared equally between 3 managers.
The rest of the bonus is shared equally between 7 salesmen.
One of the salesmen says,
“If the bonus is shared equally between all 10 people I will get 25% more money.”
Is the salesman correct?
You must show how you get your answer.
In the case of questions which do not request full workings, you may gain full marks without showing full workings. Again, I would strongly discourage this, and train students to always show full workings. Let’s imagine you complete a question worth four marks. Your workings are a bit hit and miss. Some workings, but not all, are present, and you produce a correct answer. You will get all the marks. But let’s change that scenario slightly. Let’s imagine you complete a question worth four marks. Again, your workings are a bit hit and miss, and not all present, and you produce an incorrect answer. If there are four marks, the final mark is for the correct answer, the other three are for method. If your method is not fully present, you will not get all three marks. Perhaps you gave one stage of workings, but not the others. So, you get one mark from three available marks. Not showing your workings is very much the equivalent of playing an all or nothing game. You are gambling on producing a correct answer and getting full marks or producing an incorrect answer and denying yourself some of, if not all, of the method marks.
The Edexcel examiner report from 2019 picked up on students not writing down calculations completed on a calculator. Some of their workings are happening on a calculator, but they are not transcribing this onto the exam paper. This is an example of knowing what to do, but not evidencing that knowledge.
Presenting full workings is good practice. This skill is not learned overnight; it needs to be cultivated throughout a student’s GCSE course. Good mathematicians document their thinking. We want our students to behave like good mathematicians, especially in exam situations. It maximises their opportunity to gain marks, and it also makes it easier for them to check back over their work.
Encourage your child to always present their workings for solutions, and don’t fall for the “but I know the answer, I don’t need workings” response. That is not what a good mathematician would say.
Comments