Welcome to my 72nd gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.1. Solve Me Puzzles
Back in Gems 17 I shared the excellent Mobiles problems on solveme.edc.org. People got quite excited about these at the time. Thanks to a recent tweet from Daniel Finkel (@MathforLove), I discovered that this website has expanded. The new section, Who Am I?, consists of hundreds of delightful little number puzzles which start off easy and get much harder. These are adorable.
The Mystery Grids are also excellent. Do explore - it's a great website.
2. Underground Maths
There has been a lot of buzz about Underground Maths lately. When I attended Maths in the Sticks last week I got the chance to have a go at some great problems, including the lovely Integral Chasing and Discriminating activities.
Underground Maths have now produced an incredibly helpful spreadsheet linking all their resources to the new A level content specification. This is perfect timing as many schools will be starting work on their new A level schemes of work in a few weeks.
I've been using lots of MathsPad resources lately. Yesterday I used their prime factorisation activity in a revision lesson with Year 11.
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| Extract from 'Using Prime Factorisation' |
If you don't already subscribe to MathsPad, I recommend getting it set up for September. They add lots of new resources every month. Some of their resources are available for free - including some recent additions: a workbook on mental calculation strategies, a linear graph interactive tool, a quadratic inequalities interactive tool and a tangent drawing tool. The tangent drawing tool is fun because you get to see how close you were to the correct gradient.
4. The Essence of Calculus
Grant Sanderson (@3Blue1Brown) has added ten new videos on calculus. They explain the underlying concepts beautifully. Even for experienced calculus teachers, these offer incredible subject knowledge development. It's worth making time to watch these.
5. Exam Preparation
I really like the slides that Mel from justmaths.co.uk has produced for Year 11 in their final countdown to exams. She blogged about them here. I've attempted to make various versions of this over the years but from now on I'll use Mel's slides because they're way better than my attempts! A great resource, perfectly timed.
Update
It's been a really busy few weeks! School is absolutely manic with exam preparation. I launched my #summaths event, hosted a #mathscpdchat, wrote a Schools Week article and attended Maths in the Sticks. In case you missed anything, here are some of my most recent blog posts:
My 9 - 1 Revision Resources post has been popular lately, reaching almost 20,000 views. Do check out my A level Revision Resources post too - I've added a few new activities.
As part of the TES Maths Panel I helped pull together a new GCSE resources feature which is well worth checking out. There are four recommended TES resources listed for every single GCSE topic. It's an impressive collection! I think these pages will really speed up the process of finding good resources.
If you want to come to my #summaths event at Bletchley Park then book soon! In only three days I've sold 24 out of 80 tickets. Exciting!
excellent
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