3 April 2016

A tour of resourceaholic.com

There's a lot going on here on resourceaholic.com. I thought it might be helpful to publish a guide to help new visitors find their way around.

Resources
My resource libraries can be accessed using the tabs at the top of the page. I update these libraries whenever I discover a particularly good free resource. I also do regular maintenance to remove broken links. I hope that my libraries help to reduce teachers' workload by giving them quick, easy access to good resources.

The most visited page is Algebra which lists algebra resources for Key Stage 3 and 4. The resources are grouped by topic.

It's a shame that my Core A2 page doesn't get more visits - there aren't many online banks of A level resources and I think there's some really useful stuff here. I use it all the time when I'm planning Year 13 lessons. In two years it has only had 7,000 visits (compared to 42,000 for the algebra page) which suggests that most A level teachers either don't know about it or don't need it.

Posts
I've published 173 blog posts so far, averaging seven a month. Browse through my blog archive.

My top five blog posts (based on the number of views), are:
  1. Tricks and Tips 1: HCF 
  2. Ideas for Teaching Circle Theorems
  3. Five things you might not know about the new GCSE content #1
  4. Teaching Indices
  5. Words of Wisdom: Teaching Foundation GCSE

If you haven't read Ideas from Shanghai then please do have a look. I wrote it at a time of much opposition (on Twitter, at least) to Maths Hubs.

My favourite blog post - because I enjoyed writing it so much - is The Joy of Planning. I wrote it at a time when some prominent bloggers were suggesting that teachers should deliver scripted lessons.

Most of my posts are about ideas and resources that you can use in the classroom but sometimes I write opinion pieces, for example my post Worries is about recruitment concerns and curriculum change. Occasionally I write posts that aren't maths-specific, for example my posts High Expectations and Behaviour Management for Beginners.

If you're an A level teacher then you might enjoy my posts A Level Reforms: First Thoughts, Bridging the Gap to A Level and Kicking off Year 12. I also have a number of posts about A level resources and topics.

I've written 53 gems posts since August 2014. This is where I collate teaching ideas that have been shared on Twitter so that non-tweeters don't miss out (the full list of gems posts is here). Last April, on the first anniversary of my blog, I wrote Gem Awards 2015 where I shared some highlights. I'll be writing Gem Awards 2016 soon to mark the second anniversary of my blog.

Some of my blog posts contain collections of resources, including Stretching Practice, Higher GCSE Revision and Multiple Choice Questions.

My post Open Evening provides ideas and resources for open evenings, Enrichment provides a list of in-school speakers and Favourite Problems provides links to problem solving websites. I have a number of topic specific posts (such as Teaching Trigonometry and Long Live Stem and Leaf) and posts about methods (eg Factorising Harder Quadratics and Algebraic Division).

Information and Support
Resourceaholic.com provides information for maths teachers including conference listings, Twitter hashtags and links for primary teachers. These pages can be accessed through the 'extras' menu on the right-hand side (this isn't visible on the mobile site).
I want my blog to be a primary source of support for teaching the new GCSE specification so I've worked hard to gather together resources and support on this page. I've also written a number of blog posts about how to teach new GCSE topics: real life graphs, tangents and areassequences, inequalities and quadratic graphs.

On a light-hearted note, my pages Mathsy Gifts and Words to Avoid always raise a smile.

Spin-offs
Since launching this website in 2014, I've dabbled in a few side projects. The most successful of those projects is my Pret Homework website which contains over 200 homework sheets created by a wonderful team of contributors. The idea for Pret homeworks came from Kathryn Forster - you can read all about them in this post.

Another project was my Misconceptions website. The idea was that people send me photos of student misconceptions which I collate and publish. This would be useful for new teachers, for example if it's your first time teaching indices you can look at all the indices misconceptions to help you plan effectively. People sent me loads of great examples but I had to give up on the project very early on because it's impossible to work part-time, mother two children and run three websites! It could be automated (ie people could upload photos directly) but I don't have the time or expertise to make that happen. If anyone wants to take control of this project I'm happy to pass it over.

Another project involved pulling together collections of problems relating to specific topics - for example a set of problems that involve Pythagoras' Theorem. There's five sets here and I hope to make some more over summer.

Since I started writing resourceaholic.com I've been involved in organising and/or speaking at various events - you can see a list of my achievements and engagements on my About Me page.

Updates
If you'd like to keep up-to-date with my blog, you can subscribe by email using the 'Follow by Email' box on the right-hand side. Once you've confirmed your email address, you'll receive an email whenever I publish a new post. I currently have around 200 subscribers.

Alternatively you can like my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter. I'm on Twitter a lot!

The majority of my audience is from the UK but I do have a few international readers too, particularly from the US.

I hope this has been a helpful introduction to what you can find on resourceaholic.com. I'm happy to answer any questions - please tweet or email me, or comment below. I'm also happy to take requests for blog posts (but please don't ask me to promote products!).

Thanks for reading!


A Resourceaholic cake to celebrate my 50th gems post
(with thanks to @tessmaths and my lovely Twitter friends)


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