Bentley Wood — A 68-page squared maths book with a numeracy mat, target tracker and equivalences spread

The brief

Bentley Wood's Maths department came to us for a book built specifically for the way they teach maths — squared pages throughout for working out, with the references their students reach for most already printed inside.
The team had a clear list of what those references needed to be. Students lose easy marks on questions involving unit conversions and percentages because the rules aren't to hand. Students forget the fraction–decimal–percentage equivalences they're expected to recall instantly. Students sit assessments through the year but don't track what they got, what their target was, or what they're going to do differently next time. And the department wanted the school's marking and presentation expectations printed inside the front so there's no ambiguity about what "good" looks like — black pen, neat mistakes, underlined dates and titles, green pen feedback responded to in purple.
They also wanted a target grade box on the cover, so every student opens the book onto the number they're working toward.

What we designed

Working with the Bentley Wood Maths team, we built a 68-page squared maths book with the department's most-used references baked in.

A school-branded cover with a target grade box top-right, ruled lines for name, class, teacher and subject, and the Bentley Wood logo top-left.
A presentation and marking expectations spread setting out what every book should look like — writing in black ink, mistakes crossed out neatly, dates and titles underlined, diagrams in pencil, no doodling or ripping pages — alongside the school's literacy marking symbols (Sp, P, GR, //, ^, underline) and the green-pen-feedback / purple-pen-response routine.
A "Numeracy Tips" reference mat covering the topics students most often need a quick reminder on — metric and imperial units with conversion ladders for length, weight and capacity; probability (AND = ×, OR = +) worked through with dice and coin examples; decimals (why 0.1 × 0.1 = 0.01 and why it matters — medicine doses, financial calculations, building tolerances); percentages with non-calculator and calculator methods worked through; and a quick reference for bar charts, line graphs, pie charts and scatter diagrams.
A fractions, decimals and percentages equivalences spread — a number line from −10 to +10, a fraction wall from halves down to twelfths, an equivalences table linking common fractions to their decimal and percentage forms, and a 12 × 12 multiplication square.
An eight-slot "My Targets" assessment tracker — one slot for each assessment or exam across the year, with space for the title, date, target grade (T) and achieved grade (A), and a line for "To hit my target I will…" so the next step is written down at the moment results come back, not forgotten by the next lesson.
A "Key Words / Key Formulae" double-column page for students to build their own glossary as they meet new vocabulary and formulae through the year, with the measurements reference (metric units, imperial units, conversions) printed underneath.
A literacy tips mat at the back covering common command verbs (describe, summarise, compare, contrast, analyse, explain, justify, appraise, assess, evaluate), sentence types, connectives and the TIPTOP rule for new paragraphs — so written explanations in maths get the same care as the calculations.
Squared pages throughout for class working, positioned so students can flip back to the numeracy mat or equivalences spread mid-question.

The finished book

Every Bentley Wood maths student opens the same book onto the same target grade box, the same presentation expectations, the same numeracy mat and the same equivalences — the references the department was previously printing on separate sheets are now permanently in the book students bring to every lesson, with eight assessment slots ready to track progress against target across the year.