Teaching The Fundamentals - Level 2 Inverse Proportion

Oct 20, 2026

Uploaded by Margaret

Materials for teaching inverse proportion in an English, Maths and Digital Skills context for Level 2 learners. The content explains the difference between direct and inverse proportion using worked garage, wall-building, and event-staging examples, including how to compute total work and reason about sensible outcomes. It provides top tips for concept checking, scaffolding, and logical checking, plus practice scenarios about staffing and time, culminating in a worked concept-check question about completing a stage within 3 hours.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages6

Reading Time15 min

AccessFree to download

What the Chief Examiner says?

Distinguishing direct and inverse proportion

Top Tips

Concept checking questions

Scaffolding and real-life situations

Practice: Staff and time

Checking-in scenario

Let’s look at a question

Concept check for workers in 3 hours

Teaching The Fundamentals: Level 2 Inverse Proportion Chris Briggs Product Manager Post 16 English, Maths and Digital Skills Inverse Proportion What does the Chief Examiner say? • Understand and calculate using and inverse proportion is a new topic and many have found this very challenging. • They find it difficult to distinguish between direct and inverse proportion. • It is important that centres practice question for this type of rate question for example considering if it takes 5 people 20 hours to build a garage then a good first step is to realise 5 × 20 =100, there are 100 hours of work required to build the garage. • This is very different to the common approach which is to do 20 ÷ 5 = 4 i. e., one person can build the garage quicker than 5 people, please encourage earners to say is this sensible? . Skills that power potential | Pearson Functional Skills Inverse Proportion Direct Proportion • The ratio stays the same • If it takes Sam three hours to build a wall, it will take him six hours to build two walls. Hours One wall Two walls Three walls Inverse Proportion • As one gets bigger the other gets smaller • If it takes two people three hours to build a wall, it will take one person six hours and three people two hours Hours Two people One person Three people Skills that power potential | Pearson Functional Skills Inverse Proportion Top Tips • Concept checking questions: • Work out how long it would take for 1 person. • Would you expect the answer to be bigger or smaller? • Check answers with logic ☺ . Would something take a longer or shorter time if more people are doing it? • Scaffold the question. • Compile a list of situations where inversion proportion might be used: • Check-in at an airport • Supermarket queue • Ask learners to write their own questions for colleagues using situations they devise. Skills that power potential | Pearson Functional Skills It takes 30 minutes for passengers to be checked-in when 10 staff are working. What is the minimum number of staff that must be working so that the time taken is 60 minutes? a. Would you expect the answer to be bigger or smaller than 10 staff? b. Ten members of staff are working for thirty minutes each. How much time is this in total? c. How long would 1 member of staff take to do this? d. How would you work out how many staff are needed? e. How many staff are needed? Inverse Proportion Let’s look at a question. Jasper organises large events. Last week 23 workers took 4 hours to build a stage for a concert. Next week Jasper wants to hire workers to build the same stage in 3 hours. Work out the minimum number of workers needed to complete the stage in 3 hours. Concept check • Is the number of workers going to be bigger or smaller than 23? • How many hours did the first stage take to build in total? Number of workers x number of hours • How many workers will it take to do it in 3 hours? Total hours divided by 3 Skills that power potential | Pearson Functional Skills End of Presentation

FAQs

What top tips help learners with inverse proportion questions?

Use concept-checking questions (e.g., would the answer be bigger or smaller?), scaffold the question (start with 1 person), and check answers with logic by considering whether taking more people should shorten or lengthen the time.

Oct 20, 2026

Uploaded by Margaret