Resources Anonymous

'Hello. My name is Jo and I'm a resourceaholic'. Yes, I confess, I'm utterly addicted to searching the internet for maths teaching resources.

It all started when I saw a PGCE student photocopying this Trigonometry Pile Up activity from greatmathsteachingideas.com. I work in a grammar school where pupils respond quite well to didactic teaching styles and textbooks exercises - arguably there's nothing wrong with this approach, but the lovely Trigonometry Pile Up worksheet reminded me that the internet is full of engaging resources and exciting teaching ideas. I started spending a lot of time looking for resources online and sharing these resources with colleagues. It became a bit of an obsession! Unfortunately my colleagues found it all rather overwhelming. And they're right - there's so many resources to choose from, no-one has the time to look at them all. So it's helpful when someone does the searching, filtering and classifying for us.

William Emeny recently posted a link to 'Mathematics 101: Leading Sites for Math Teachers' on his blog. Ooh, new websites! Heaven for a resourceaholic.

I haven't had a chance to look at all these websites yet, but here's some of my top resource recommendations from the websites I've looked at so far. I've focused on A level because that's where I think it's hardest to find interesting teaching ideas.

Statistics 1 
Illustrative Mathematics has some fantastic ideas for teaching S1. Here's a selection of examples:

• Correlation and Regression: a lovely activity on coffee shops and crime. Includes calculating a correlation coefficient, interpreting a regression equation and considering causality and outliers.
• Discrete Random Variables:  a short activity Sounds Really Good! (sort of) which features a real-life use of expectation. Bob's Bagel Shop is similar.
• Probability: the card activity Describing Events is an excellent introduction to probability and the activity Venn Diagrams and the Addition Rule is good too. I also like this short Titanic activity on independence.
• Data:  These activities on Haircut Costs and Speed Trap focus on comparing box plots. Describing Data Sets with Outliers and Identifying Outliers are about outliers and skewness in data (see my related post on teaching skewness).
• Normal Distribution: short contextual exercises Should We Send Out a Certificate? and Do You Fit In This Car?.

Core 1 and 2

• Logs: This booklet Logarithmic Functions from Mathematics Vision Project is packed full of excellent activities such as ordering logs, converting between exponential and logarithmic form, using log laws and solving equations with logs.  For related resources, see my earlier post on Logs. 
• Quadratics and Cubics: I like this short Cubic Graph task (answers here) from Mathematics Assessment Project. There's some great Forming Quadratics activities here too.
• Circles: Mathematics Assessment Project also has full lesson plans - I've successfully used the excellent materials from Equations of Circles 1 and Equations of Circles 2 with my Year 12s. 
• Surds: See resources listed in my earlier blog post, Surds. 

Finally, I thought it might be helpful to share this quadratic activity 'Find the coordinates' - my school uses this on Sixth Form Induction Day in our maths taster sessions (thanks to Susan Wall at Wilberforce College for this activity).

I'll continue to work my way through the website list and will feature recommended Key Stage 3 and GCSE resources in later posts.