Hello and welcome to my 41st gems post. It's been ages since my last gems post, but I have a good excuse! I've been utterly snowed under with work and I've also been preoccupied with a very exciting project... I'm organising a Christmaths Party and it's going to be awesome. Details will be announced very soon. In the mean time, here's some nice ideas and resources that have been shared on Twitter over the last few weeks.1. Rugby
In case you hadn't noticed, the Rugby World Cup is in full swing. My students are really into it. I used the stadium capacity infographic below (shared by @amberlee902) in a lesson on significant figures.
I also spotted the infographic below on mathsandelearning.wikispaces.com - this is a great teaching tool for pictographs. You could ask your students what each symbol represents numerically.
2. Resources for high attainers
I read a post called 'My new favourite website'. Huge thanks to Richard Tock (@TickTockMaths) for this post, in which he recommends the very helpful website DrFrostMaths.com. This website is written by Dr J Frost who is a maths teacher at Tiffin School (a grammar school just down the road from me). Dr Frost shares a huge number of his own teaching resources, including PowerPoints, worksheets, homeworks and quizzes. His worksheets are well designed for high attainers, incorporating both basic skills questions and stretch questions. His website also has tips and resources for students entering maths challenges such as the JMO.
There's tonnes to explore on this website - here's an example of his Pythagoras exercises to give you an idea. 
3. Skills Check
Thanks to Miss_Ren (@ReynoldsITT) for sharing her Skills Check, pictured below. This is a versatile activity that could be used regularly, perhaps as a starter or as a mini-assessment. Students complete the questions for values of a and b given by the teacher. The values of a an b could be given as integers, fractions, decimals, numbers in standard form, powers, surds and so on. This works for a number of topics and is a good way to check key skills.
Another activity for practising key skills is this times tables grid from maths-starters.co.uk - the example below is set to the top difficulty level!
This Powers of Ten Maze is from Teachit Maths. It's a really nice resource for practising a fundamental skill.
I love this post from Sarah Hagan (@mathequalslove) about some great ideas she saw on Twitter. It includes the awesome Ten Commandments of Mathematics pictured below, which is from Mrs Anderson (@MissPools).
I also like this 8 Mathematical Practices of Jedi Masters shared by Mrs Anderson.
Update
Work is going well but like everyone else I'm pretty busy. Half-term can't come soon enough. I've managed to find time to write a few posts though, so do have a read:
- A write-up of my day at #mathsconf5
- A reflection on my short time teaching Foundation GCSE
- Two posts about A level resources (A Level Resources and A Level Resources #2). I was pleased to see that Susan Ward (@suzekward), who attended my workshop at #mathsconf5, successfully used one of the resources I recommended:
Here's some other bits and pieces that you might have missed:
- AQA shared some excellent editable Key Stage 3 tests.
- La Salle shared a free problem solving booklet which contains some lovely accessible problems.
- Michael Tidd's post about changes to the Primary Maths curriculum is now a TES article. Please read it if you haven't already - it's important information for secondary maths teachers.
- I enjoyed teaching surds to Year 10 last week and particularly liked this new surds puzzle from MathsPad:
- I'm pleased to see that loads of schools have been using my 'Design a Clock' idea which featured in my Open Evening post.
- I started teaching a new Year 11 class last week and enjoyed making another expectations video using VideoScribe (which my department now subscribes to, meaning I can make more videos next year!).
Thanks for reading! I'll be back with more gems soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment