20 February 2018

5 Websites You Should Know... #5

In October 2016 I started writing a series of posts called '5 Websites You Should Know...'. I wrote four posts, covering Corbett Maths, Mr Carter Maths, MathsBot and MathsPad. These posts were based on a presentation I did at a TeachMeet. The fifth website in my TeachMeet presentation was resourceaholic.com, but it didn't make sense for me to write a blog post about my own website. So my '5 websites' series ended after four posts, leaving me with an unsatisfactory unfinished project.

Recently I discovered David Morse's resources and wrote about them in Gems 82. I feel like I should do more to spread the word about these resources, so I've decided they need a post in their own right. This is a good opportunity to finish off my '5 Websites You Should Know...' series!

David's resources are all freely available on TES and can be accessed through his growing website maths4everyone.com. There are over 250 resources, many of which I have linked from my resource libraries. David, an experienced maths teacher and Head of Computing, was the most downloaded new TES author of 2017. In this post I'll focus on David's worksheet grids.

I like these grids for five reasons:
  • The questions are well written.
  • Some sheets cover a single skill in depth, which is very useful when introducing a new skill for the first time (isolation of skills is all the rage at the moment, and makes a lot of sense to me... one thing at a time, please).
  • Other sheets are specifically designed for revision, so cover a whole topic in one place. Last year I wrote about how I run my Year 11 revision lessons after Easter - these grids will be perfect for the topic-specific element. 
  • The grid format is print friendly and student friendly. Plus there's no clutter, no mistakes, and the branding is unobtrusive.
  • Full solutions are provided.

Let's look at some examples...

1. Circle Theorems (First Steps) includes a whole sheet just on isosceles triangles in circles. I've never taught this explicitly before - it normally just comes up in amongst the other circle theorems. Next time, I'll slow down, teach it properly and use this resource.

This is what the solutions look like:

2. Calculating bearings has five worksheets of varying difficulty levels. GCSE students always seem to struggle with bearings - these questions really help develop fluency.
3. Area of a triangle using sine is an excellent set of questions on this topic, with a good level of challenge. I'd use these questions at both GCSE and A level.
4. Multiplying surds is one of a set of worksheets on surds. It specifically focuses on multiplying. As with the other resources, there's a sensible progression of questions here.
5. Expanding triple brackets provides straightforward fluency practice with a good level of challenge. There are similar sheets for expanding a single bracket, expanding and simplifying and expanding double brackets.

I've only provided five examples here but the collection of resources on TES is extensive and growing. Hopefully you get the idea - it's all standard fluency practice but well designed and user-friendly. These work well for classwork, revision, and cover. In my opinion these are really useful sets of questions.

David has shared way more than just worksheet grids so do check out his website to see the rest of his resources. Today I found his collection of challenging exam questions on vectors really helpful when planning a Year 11 lesson.

I'm very grateful to David for all his hard work in creating and sharing his resources. I hope you find them useful too.






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