I said I wouldn't write any more posts this summer, but this is just a quick one to share something I've just made.
You may have already seen the expectations videos I made for Year 10 and Year 11. I was considering making these for Year 12 and 13 too but wasn't sure it would work well with these groups. Then I stumbled across this infographic that I made last year and never had the chance to use.
I like this a lot, but there's two problems. First, it requires colour printing, which I don't do. Second, it's possible that students will just glance at it and not really take anything in.
Hello and welcome to my 39th gems post. This is where I share five maths teaching ideas I've seen on Twitter. This will be my last post of the summer holidays - I've been a busy blogger this summer but lesson planning takes priority this weekend. We all know how manic things get at school in September.
1. Bojagi
I'm excited about this. Dave Radcliffe (@daveinstpaul) has created a multiplication game called Bojagi. Read this Forbes article for details. Teaching area to Year 7? Get them playing this game. It's awesome.
The goal is to draw a rectangle around each number so that the area of each rectangle is the number it contains. The rectangles must not overlap and must fill the entire grid. I did the puzzle pictured below. It was fun. Have a go.
Bojagi puzzle with solution
2. Sharing resources
Here's a lovely idea for your maths department office from Hannah (@LorHRL). Put up a board for sharing resources. Staff pin up their recommendations for various topics, along with a note about where to find each resource. It's much easier to look at hard copies than search through files on a computer so I can see this board being really helpful. Topics could be updated regularly - for example Year 12 teachers normally teach surds in the first or second week of term, so it makes sense to start with surds resources on the board and put up different topics the following week.
3. Name cards
These name cards from MathsPad have been very well received on Twitter. You could use them in your first lesson with Year 7. Print the pages double sided - students write their name, complete the puzzles and stand the card on their desk. There's an editable version here too. I love MathsPad - their resources are excellent.
4. Classroom ideas
I like this display idea from Hannah White (@MissWhiteMaths). She's created a Wonderwall on which she'll display maths challenges that start with 'I wonder...' (like 'I wonder how many footballs will fit on a pitch').
I also really like John Corbett's (@Corbettmaths) idea to put photo frames on desks.
These are £1 Ikea photo frames, velcroed to the desks. He's starting with an 'Ideal Presentation' picture in the frames (featured in Gems 35) but he intends to change the picture every week or fortnight, for example to display information about revision session, star students and so on.
5. Statistics prompts
Whilst planning my first S1 lesson of the year, I stumbled upon these lovely graphics. These will make brilliant discussion prompts to get students thinking about the reliability of statistics.
My colleague Lizzie (@MissStokesMaths) always tells her students that they have more than the average number of legs! Another great discussion point.
The new GCSE specification requires students to understand the difference between correlation and causation. Amir (@WorkEdgeChaos) shared this extract from the marketing material of a cheeky solicitor - a great example to share with students:
Update
Since my last gems post I've written two posts: Icebreakers and Multiple Choice Questions. I also made a resource for finding the gradient of a curve, a topic on the new GCSE specification.
This week saw the first ever #mathsjournalclub chat. It works a bit like a book club. We discussed an article about students' understanding of functions. The chat was a success and I look forward to the next one in a couple of months - follow @mathjournalclub for details.
Speaking of Twitter chats, #mathsTLP returns on Sunday. This is where we share ideas and resources for lessons in the week ahead. If you're new to Twitter, please join in - you're very welcome. Here's how:
I've seen a lot of great icebreaker ideas this week so I thought it might be helpful to share some of my favourites here. Most of us will be meeting new classes for the first time next week. I'll be getting a new tutor group - I need activities that will help me get to know my students and help them get to know each other too.
Creeping Death
First, a story about what not do. When I was at university I attended a two-day residential selection centre for a graduate job at Esso. I think there were twelve candidates, all Russell Group, all in smart new suits. Naturally we started with an icebreaker. We were told to say something interesting about ourselves. I had a few ideas for what I was going to say - I used to live in Africa and have a couple of stories to tell - but suddenly I had reason to panic. The other candidates - every one of them - had far more interesting stories than me. They'd met royalty, they'd been on TV, they'd won awards, they were related to celebrities, they'd saved lives. I'll never forget that feeling of impending doom as I waited for my turn to speak, then the embarrassment and feeling of inferiority. It shook my confidence for the remainder of the selection centre.
'Say something interesting about yourself' is not a good way to break the ice, especially with 11 year olds who may well think they have nothing interesting to say. If you must ask a child to say something interesting about themselves, put some suggestions on the board in case they're stuck for ideas (eg number of siblings, what they did over summer etc). Or, even better, use some of the activities listed below.
Me... By the Numbers
Donna Boucher (@MathCoachCorner) shared a lovely idea in this post. Students fill in the template with numerical facts about themselves.
Numbers Quiz
A related idea comes from this post from Sarah Hagan. Ask each student to make a quiz about themselves. The answers should be numerical and students should provide an answer bank at the bottom, like my example below. Sarah completed all her students' quizzes and they marked her answers. Alternatively, if students haven't met each other before, they could ask another student to complete their quiz. This gives them a chance to chat about their answers and get to know each other. Even the shy students should be happy with this activity.
Two Truths and a Lie
When I returned from maternity leave in January I took over a Year 11 tutor group. To get to know them I did 'Two truths and a lie'. I told them two facts about myself and one lie - they had to guess which was the lie. Then I gave them some time to write down their two truths and a lie. I let them volunteer to read their facts out - each time I had to guess the lie. It was a really fun activity (they were surprised by how good I was at detecting their lies!). They all enjoyed it and, because they were confident students who already knew each other well, most volunteered to have a go.
Blobs and Lines
This post Icebreakers That Rock is brilliant - it's full of good ideas. I particularly like Blobs and Lines - students are prompted to either line up in some particular order (eg by birthday) or gather in 'blobs' based on something they have in common (eg how they get to school). Students quickly discover things they have in common.
Who I Am
Dan Meyer's post The First Day Wiki from back in 2007 provides a link to his well-known 'Who I Am' activity.
His post also features a class scavenger hunt, shown below. I plan to use adaptations of both activities with my new Year 12 tutor group next week - my versions are here.
Dan's post also includes a form that students complete while you talk through rules and expectations.
If you're looking for more ideas for communicating expectations, check out the videos in my recent post Behaviour Management for Beginners.
Also, form tutors looking for ideas to fill daily form time will love formtimeideas.com.
First Maths Lessons
In this post I've focused on icebreakers. I've written previously about maths activities for first lessons - see Gems 2, plus the lovely alphabet idea in Gems 34. I also have two posts that might be of interest:
Multiple choice questions (MCQs) have always been popular in maths in some parts of the world. In recent years they have gained popularity in England and Wales, and are now commonly used as a diagnostic tool in the classroom. MCQs are also now a key feature of AQA's GCSE papers.
Some teachers have been asking where they can find MCQs that are aligned with our curriculum. I've listed some sources below - if you have anything to add, please email me.
1. Foundation and Higher GCSE Multiple Choice Questions by Topic Suitable for Key Stage 3 and 4.
I found these multiple choice quizzes at work - I believe they were written by Julie Bolter, probably to accompany a textbook. There are quizzes for a number of topics including sequences, standard form and coordinates.
2. Foundation and Higher GCSE Multiple Choice Revision Questions Suitable for Key Stage 3 and 4.
There's a large selection of multiple choice questions here, both in PowerPoint and Word. The topics are mixed so these would be useful for exam revision or retrieval practice. Thanks to Mitesh Patel for sending me these. We don't know the original source so please tweet or email me if you know.
3. Diagnostic Questions Suitable for Key Stages 1 - 5.
This fantastic website from Craig Barton has a huge range of multiple choice questions, contributed by users. You can quickly create quizzes for use with mini-whiteboards, voting cards or Plickers. The most powerful aspect of this website is the opportunity to set students quizzes online - this allows teachers to read explanations and therefore analyse students' thinking.
It's worth checking out the ready made quiz collections including quizzes from White Rose, UKMT, Edexcel, AQA and OCR.
Grace Horne, who is Head of Maths at Kettering Science Academy, has sent me her amazing set of multiple choice quizzes. She's made 85 consistently formatted quizzes, each containing five questions drawn from diagnosticquestions.com. Quizzes are categorised by topic and GCSE tier. Answers are provided. This is a very helpful resource! Huge thanks to Grace for sharing this.
4. SQA Suitable for Key Stage 5.
The Scottish Qualifications Authority used to set Objective Tests for Higher Mathematics. These contain lovely questions for Year 12 and 13, covering topics such as calculus, trigonometry, sequences, vectors and the equation of a circle. Thanks to Helen Dey for telling me about these. Thanks also to @mrallanmaths for sharing this editable bank of Objective Test questions.
5. Integral
Suitable for Key Stage 5.
MEI provides a great selection of multiple choice tests for A level Maths and Further Maths on Integral (school login required). The example below is from a Normal Distribution assessment for Edexcel S1.
6. 30 Number Starters Suitable for Key Stage 3 and 4.
Ben Cooper (@bcoops_online) on TES provides a PowerPoint of 30 multiple choice quizzes for various number topics including fractions, decimals and percentages.
7. Functional MCQs Suitable for Key Stage 2 and 3.
Thanks to Jon Treby for this set of Functional Multiple Choice Questions. They are split by topic and all questions are contextual.
8. Foundation of Advanced Mathematics
Suitable for Key Stage 4.
Stuart Price (@sxpmaths) wrote a post about using multiple choice questions from Foundation of Advanced Mathematics exams for Year 10 revision competitions. There's a number of past papers to draw questions from - most of the topics are from GCSE and the questions are suitable for extension in Year 10 and 11.
There's lots to explore here! If I've missed anything, please email it to resourceaholic@gmail.com. Thank you!
Hello and welcome to my 38th gems post. This is where I share five teaching ideas I've seen on Twitter. As teachers start making plans and preparing resources for September, there's been a flurry of inspiring ideas on Twitter - I can barely keep up!
1. Tessellation
It's quite rare that there's exciting news in the world of mathematics, but we've recently seen the discovery of a new type of tessellating pentagon.
I like teaching tessellation - it follows nicely from polygon angles. The new GCSE specification doesn't mention tessellation (what a shame it's been removed), nor does the Key Stage 3 curriculum, but still I think it deserves a place on our schemes of work. It's good for enrichment and also allows students to apply their knowledge of polygon angles, for example in the Surrounding a Point activity from Don Steward pictured below. Mathigon has a lovely tessellation section featuring nice pictures and an online tool.
There's been lots of tweets and posts about displays this week. I like these lovely vinyl corridor displays from @cOmplexnumber.
I also like this growth mindset display from English teacher Rebecca Foster (@TLPMrsF) which is similar to the mindset display that I first wrote about in Gems 3, but would fit on a smaller noticeboard.
One of my favourite classroom display ideas is the sentence stems display from @ExplainingMaths which featured in Gems 26. It's good to have displays that are of real use to students throughout the year.
It's worth reading Paul Collins' (@mrprcollins) excellent post about the new displays he's put up in his classroom and corridors.
3. History of Maths
I don't know very much about the history of maths and that's a great shame. It's a priority for me to improve my subject knowledge in this area. I intend to start by attending @Kris_Boulton's workshop at the next maths conference.
Kris' post A History of Maths features a timeline showing people and societies of key influence in mathematics. It also shows key publications and ideas. The picture below is only a very small extract - have a look through the full timeline. It's fascinating to see the order of things. Perhaps display this in your classroom and tell your students about the origins of the topics they're studying.
4. Challenge Questions for Year 12
Stuart Price (@sxpmaths) has collated some AS stretch and challenge questions for core topics. They can be accessed here. Thanks Stuart for this helpful resource.
If you teach A level and are coming to the maths conference in Sheffield on 26th September, do come along to my workshop about A level resources.
5. Exit Tickets
Many maths teachers use exit tickets in every lesson. The idea is that you set a single question or short set of questions at the end of the lesson and analyse the results. Typically students would hand their exit ticket to you as they leave the classroom. It's important to keep the questions simple – if students get them wrong you need to know why. It's an effective way of identifying misconceptions and deciding whether students are ready to move on.
Lesley Hall (@lhmaths) created a great set of exit tickets that can be found here. And thanks to Em (@EJMaths) for recently sharing her set of exit tickets here. These incorporate RAG123.
Update
I've published four blog posts in the last week and I have another four posts in draft - I really need to stop all the blogging and spend some time preparing my first lessons! Here's what I've been up to since my last gems post:
I wrote a post Behaviour Management for Beginners which features a few resources I've prepared for September - my expectations videos have been popular.
I had some hilarious new comments on my Words to Avoid page - these are definitely worth a read.
I was very pleased that @oldandrewuk and @Just_Maths set up an Echo Chamber specifically for UK maths education blogs. Follow @MathsEcho to keep up-to-date with all the latest posts.
I popped into school and, borrowing a lovely idea from Danielle Bartram (@MissBsResources), put Maths Mr Men stickers from @solvemymaths on my new calculators so I can keep track of them.
Finally, four reminders:
If you haven't already done so, you can 'like' my new Facebook page for updates.
#mathstlp will return at 7pm on Sunday 30th August for lesson planning advice.
My new GCSE page is packed full of useful resources and links. My recent post on tangents and areas is worth reading if you're teaching GCSE next year.
Check out my hashtag #mathsgems for inspiring ideas from previous gems posts.
That's it from me. I'll leave you with this nice puzzle from the ATM (@ATMMathematics).
I try to keep my posts totally maths-focused, but I've been doing a lot of thinking about behaviour management this week so I thought it might be helpful to share my ideas. I'm the beginner here.
In June I moved from a girls' grammar school to a boys' comprehensive. I'd been at the grammar school for five years (I became a teacher in my late 20s and it was my first teaching job). With the exception of the time I spent at a 'difficult' school in Croydon during my PGCE, I'd never done any proper behaviour management before. My students almost always followed instructions. Sometimes they were chatty, and they were forever rolling up their skirts, but it was all very low-level. In fact one of the challenges of working at a grammar school was planning enough material for lessons because most students were so focussed that they worked incredibly quickly.
When I said I was moving to a comprehensive school, I was met with looks of horror from some colleagues - "you do realise that's going to be really hard, don't you?", they'd say. A friend suggested that I read Tom Bennett's excellent book The Behaviour Guru to prepare myself. I was a bit dismissive of all this because my new school has a reputation for good behaviour, and when I had a tour of the school I saw nothing but excellent conduct in lessons.
A bad start
When I started my new job in June I found things a lot harder than I'd expected. I had two Key Stage 3 classes that I felt I had no control over. It's difficult taking over classes during the summer term and it was made worse by my failure to set out my expectations from the start - I hadn't realised how important this is. Now I know better.
I was taken aback by the way the boys argued with me - if I told them to stop doing something, they'd either argue back or they'd whine. I kept nagging them to get on with their work. They did silly things that drove me crazy. I found myself shouting like a madwoman at times, but even then they weren't listening. I felt like I was barely teaching any maths and that made me both sad and embarrassed.
I was also taken aback by how much I warmed to these students - some of them were testing me and we all knew it, but the vast majority were full of personality and very likeable.
A fresh start
I'm determined to be better at this in September. I've settled in now, so I won't be 'the new teacher' any more. Having my own classes right from the start of the year will work wonders. Here's five things I need to remember:
1. Consistency. I have a terrible habit of threatening to give punishments and then not following through. This totally undermines my position. Consistency is vital.
2. Structures. My school has good behaviour management structures in place. I mustn't be afraid to use these support mechanisms, such as having a student removed from a lesson when they are disrupting learning.
3. Expectations. I shouldn't just assume that students know the rules. Every teacher is different. I will state the rules at the start of the year and remind the class as often as is necessary. I found Tom Bennett's video on Classroom Rules helpful here.
4. Parents. I've only phoned a parent once in five years of teaching! I need to do this more - both to give good feedback and to discuss behaviour. It's taken me a while to appreciate the extent to which most children care about what you tell their parents. I plan to do a half-termly newsletter (inspired by this great post from @MathedUp) to share my students' successes.
5. Don't try to be liked. Another bad habit of mine is caring too much about what people think of me. It really doesn't matter if I'm not my students' 'favourite teacher'. The important thing is that I teach maths well.
It's really important that I get behaviour management right because (as I've experienced) if I make a mess of it then I won't have the opportunity to teach maths, which is a disaster for all involved. I very much agree with what David Perks says in his article Pupils Behaving Badly, "And herein lies the challenge for teachers: they have to believe that what they are teaching is the most important thing in the world for their pupils to learn. This is the source of their authority in the classroom. It is what gives them the right to stand in front of pupils and demand their attention".
Resources
I've made a few bits and pieces to get me started. They may be gimmicky, but making them has given me the opportunity to think about how I want things to work, so it's been a worthwhile exercise.
Inspired by @theshauncarter's post Classroom rules 2015, I'll be asking students to stick this set of rules onto the inside cover of their exercise books.
And inspired by @mathycathy's post First Day Favorites, I've made two videos for my first lessons. This is for my Year 11s - it's a small class currently working at GCSE grade E/F:
And this one, with different messages, is for my high attaining Year 10s:
These were made with a 7 Day Free Trial of VideoScribe. I might make one for Year 12 too because these are really fun to make.
I was going to buy these Sparky VIP Rewards to encourage positive behaviour but I think they'd work best at Key Stage 2 or 3 and I'll only be teaching Key Stage 4 and 5. Lovely idea though.
Thanks to everyone who has offered me behaviour management advice over the past few months - especially Samantha Rhodes (@rhodes_math) who sent me lots of helpful advice when I was finding things hard. Thanks also to everyone on Twitter who has given me tips on how to motivate boys.
Here's hoping I nail this in September - wish me luck!
