11 Plus Exams Forum

My DS (Y12) wants to get one of these calculators to help him with his maths & further maths, as some of his classmates have done. We are concerned that this could actually disadvantage him, by allowing him to potentially 'take the easy option' of using the calculator instead of mastering the understanding of the subject by doing the calculation the long way. What do you think ? Any suggestions to help us out of this quandary are appreciated.

http://www.edexcel.com/subjects/Mathema ... orial=1078" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Is it Edexcel? He can't use it for C1 and see rules above.

Personally I encourage students to get one if they are going on to do science, engineering or maths at university.

They are great tools and you have to put time in to master them. They are not cheating as you still need to understand what they are telling you.

Thanks for your reply, Guest55. The exam is OCR, he knows C1 is not allowed to use calculator.

We are just concerned that using this particular calculator might hinder his learning and understanding of the topics which he is presently trying to learn (such us differentiation, integration, matrices etc) by making the answers available to him rather than the solutions.

Are we on the wrong track?

Yes - if it's allowed model you can't do symbolic calculus so it won't do differentiation or integration for him.

http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/69918-faqs ... -exams.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

He'll have to show working ...

I've been teaching A level for 30+ years now and I use one myself and got one for my DS. It will help with checking in a couple of topics; the only possible downside is relying on it too much. If he's able enough to be doing double maths then I'm not concerned about that.

Make sure he looks at mark schemes and understands that, for example, a sketch of a graph just copied from his calculator display won't get full marks.

PM me if you want a bit more detail.

Thanks for your explanation~Guest55, it's been very helpful.

Note on the leaflet I linked it says you need certain functions for MEI so do check the school recommend this model. I don't teach this syllabus and my calculator is a much older model so can't advise on that.

Get him to show you what they can do; they're brilliant!

Well my ds ended up with a Casio FX-CG20 Graphic Calculator for her a level maths and further maths.

however she then had to get a fx991es plus for uni as that was too powerful.

make of that what you will