Paper 2 (Calculator) Strategy for 0606

Paper 2 allows a calculator, and that permission is as much a trap as a tool. The calculator does arithmetic; it does not do method, and 0606 awards most marks for method. Students who lean on it to leap straight to a decimal answer skip exactly the working the mark scheme rewards, and expose themselves to keystroke errors with no method marks to cushion the fall.

Show the method, then evaluate

The Paper 2 discipline is exact-then-evaluate: set the problem up algebraically, show the method lines, and only reach for the calculator at the final step. A connected-rates question should show the chain rule and the substitution before the decimal appears. This banks the method marks and means a mistyped final calculation costs one mark, not the whole question.

The failure mode is the student who writes only a final decimal. If it is right, fine; if a keystroke slipped, there is nothing on the page to score. On a calculator paper, visible method is still your insurance.

Master the angle mode

The most common Paper 2 disaster is the wrong angle mode. Circular measure and calculus with trig work in radians; a trig equation asked in degrees works in degrees. A calculator silently left in the wrong mode gives confident, wholly wrong answers, $\sin 2$ is $0.909$ in radians but $0.035$ in degrees, and segment-area questions hinge on getting this right.

Build one habit: check the mode before every trig calculation, and reset it whenever the question’s angle unit changes. This single check prevents a whole category of avoidable zeros.

Don’t round until the end

Rounding a value partway through and feeding the rounded number back in is a quiet accuracy-killer. Keep full precision in the calculator (use the answer memory) and round only the final answer, to 3 significant figures unless told otherwise. Premature rounding is how a correct method still lands outside the accepted answer range.

Same length, same pacing rule

Paper 2 is the same length and mark weight as Paper 1, so the pacing is identical: take the clean marks first, flag the thinkers for a second pass, and never let one question consume the time of several. The calculator can tempt you to grind at a hard question because “the numbers are easy”, resist it; time discipline matters as much here as on the non-calculator paper.

A specialist can quickly spot the calculator habits leaking marks, the missing method lines, the mode slips, the premature rounding. That read is what the trial class provides. Message us on WhatsApp with a marked Paper 2 to hand.