JustMaths Conference 2017

I love the summer term for CPD - I've been to two conferences in four days!

I'm very grateful to the JustMaths team for inviting me along to their first annual conference. I don't normally attend events on school days, but because all my exam classes have left I didn't need to set any cover for this one. It was a great idea to hold this conference after the end of the exam period.

I attend quite a lot of conferences and always pay my own travel and accommodation - although it's financially challenging, I think it's worth it for all the ideas, insights and networking.

I got the train to Stoke after school on Monday and was very grateful to Emma (@El_Timbre) and Laura (@LauraCodd1) for collecting me from the station. Once I'd checked into the Alton Towers Hotel I went along to pre-conference drinks, where Jenny (@MsSteel_Maths) was busy painting nails with mathsy designs (the templates can be bought here, and hopefully Jenny will be doing nails for charity at #mathsconf13 in Sheffield).

The Alton Towers Hotel was full of quirky features. The children's entertainment went on surprisingly late, with dancing toddlers everywhere at 10pm!

On the Tuesday morning, I enjoyed collecting bits and pieces from the conference exhibition including A level SAMs from AQA, GCSE problems from Edexcel, and stationery freebies from ypo. Ypo had some good Brain Booster packs which each contain 50 cards giving teachers ideas on how to use manipulatives in the classroom.

I was surprised to see a BBC stand as I've not seen one at a maths conference before - they told me about their new maths videos for use in the classroom.

The conference venue was beautifully decorated. I was surprised by the size of the event - it was much bigger than I expected. There were around 300 delegates - many were at their first ever maths conference. I normally see lots of familiar faces at La Salle's conferences but this was a totally different crowd - it was really nice to meet so many lovely new people. Some teachers had travelled from overseas to attend. The majority of teachers I spoke to had never heard of resourceaholic.com, so I guess I still have a lot of work to do (but I make no money from my website, so my marketing budget is non-existent... I rely on word of mouth, so was very grateful to Mel for mentioning my blog during the conference).

There were lots of nice surprises throughout day - including a huge number of prizes (I was delighted to win a bottle of champagne in the prize draw!), and a free JustMaths marking bag and fidget spinner for every delegate.

The day was organised a bit differently to conferences I've been to before - instead of choosing smaller workshops, we all stayed together for the whole day and listened to six sessions - one from each of the exam boards, one from Ofqual and one Q&A at the end. It was a shame not to have a session from the excellent Mel and Seager of JustMaths (it would have been good to hear what they do at their school that earned them TES Maths Team of the Year last year) but they did an awesome job of hosting the event and were very entertaining.

In the exam board sessions it was good to look at exam questions and to hear about some of the resources available to teachers (such as OCR's check-in tests, Edexcel's Access to Foundation Tier resources, and Eduqas's takeaway menus).

The absolute highlight of the day was Craig Barton's session for AQA. I've seen Craig speak at a few conferences before and it's been fascinating to see his approaches develop over time. Craig has read tonnes of research recently, and has very helpfully summarised it for maths teachers on his research page. In his session he discussed how teachers often rush ahead to complex exam questions before students have developed fluency in the each of the individual skills involved, and he said (controversially...?) that students shouldn't be doing a full GCSE paper until the March before their final exams.

Craig's suggested approach was the catchy 'IDAP': 1. Isolate the skill, 2. Develop the skill, 3. Assess the skill, 4. Practise retrieval later. He showed us examples of resources that worked well for skill development in novice learners.

The thing that stood out the most for me was what Craig said about 'non-problems'. At the moment, many of us teach Pythagoras and then give students a load of Pythagoras questions in different contexts and guises. These problems have the same deep structure (Pythagoras) but different surface structures, like these:

Students don't have to work out that they should use Pythagoras in these questions, because it's obvious if the lesson is all about Pythagoras. An alternative approach would be to give a set of questions with the same surface structure (eg an isosceles triangle) but different deep structures (eg not all involving Pythagoras). This makes a lot of sense.

I kept a tally of how many times Craig said the word flippin' - I got to 15, but I may have missed a few as I was very busy taking notes! It was an utterly awesome session and I'm really glad I was there to see it.

At the end of the conference all delegates had free access to the theme park - including a period of exclusive access to the big rides. I was really excited to try out a few rides but, annoyingly, I had a train to catch. By the time Craig and I got off the monorail and walked around the park, we didn't have any time left for rides because I had to rush off and get my taxi. But at least I had a good catch up with Craig!

I bet that everyone who stayed for the rides had a fantastic time! What a fun way to end an event.

Well done and congratulations to Mel, Seager and Fize from JustMaths - I can't imagine how much work is involved in pulling together such a big event. The next one is on Thursday 28th June 2018 - save the date!

#mathsconf10

Yesterday I attended #mathsconf10 in sunny Essex. I'm very grateful to Mark McCourt and La Salle Education for another fantastic day of maths CPD and networking.

I started the day by meeting up with Lisa Winer, a math teacher from Florida who is visiting Europe for a couple of weeks. She's written a blog post about her trip here. We travelled from Central London to Essex by train and had plenty of time to check out the exhibition before the conference started. The format of the day was slightly different to previous conferences - because there were so many workshops, there was an additional session added to the programme and no keynote at the start. This worked well - it was good to be able to choose five workshops, though choices were as difficult as ever.

In the first session I presented my 'Angles in Depth' workshop. This is the first in a new series of workshops where I look at a topic in depth (misconceptions, explanations, resources etc). I feel quite strongly that this is something that maths teachers need, though I think it will take me a while to convince people of this! I blogged about it here.

Apart from the uncomfortably hot room and the glare on the screen, I think my session went well. I focused specifically on two angle facts - adjacent angles on straight lines and angles in a triangle. After my workshop, lots of members of the audience told me stories of their experience teaching angles - the misconceptions they'd seen and the approaches they'd used - which was brilliant.

Lots of people at the conference requested that I share my session online. It makes a lot more sense if you actually hear me talk through it, but here you go:

• PowerPoint (includes links and animations)
• PDF version 
• Workshop handout (angles problems for Year 7)

Links and sources are in the notes at the bottom of each slide.

Once I've made a few more of these I'll put them on a separate page so they're all in one place.

The idea is that these slide packs are shared with trainee teachers the first time they teach these topics. My next session, at Sheffield in September, will focus on angles in parallel lines.

After my session Charlie Dawson showed me a brilliant manipulative which is really simple to make:

Simple manipulatives to help understand angles: show me a red acute angle, show me a yellow angle of 295 degrees etc. pic.twitter.com/AzAwxJR48m

— Charlie Dawson (@dawsonmaths) 24 June 2017

In the second session I attended Mark McCourt's workshop on the history of maths education. I did a lot of research on this earlier in the year because I ran a session on it for my SCITT trainees, but I felt that I had some gaps in my knowledge so it was worth attending Mark's session to find out more. As expected, this was a really interesting session. It's fascinating that maths education keeps swinging from progressive to traditional and back again.

I then went to Andrew Taylor's session where he talked about his personal history of problem solving. He shared some lovely Malcolm Swan problems, including Skeleton Tower from the blue box.

When he shared the marking guides for the old maths GCSE coursework it made me very happy that I became a teacher after coursework was removed from GCSE. Tilly's tweet about this really made me laugh:

Andrew spoke about the reasons that coursework was discontinued and how exams now try to test problem solving skills, though of course we know that conducting mathematical investigations under time conditions is not ideal.

During this workshop a lot of people attended the lovely Jemma Sherwood's session on feedback and came out saying that they were going to start using exit tickets and wanted to know where to find some. I think exit tickets are a great idea - I don't use them but some of my colleagues do. I blogged about them last year here and included some links to exit ticket resources (though, arguably, an exit ticket should only take a few minutes to create so teachers may be better off making their own tailored exit tickets instead of using pre-made ones).

At lunch I popped along to the tweet-up and tried (unsuccessfully!) to make a cobra weave stick bomb with Lucy Rycroft-Smith.

After lunch I attended Rachel Horsman's session 'Geometrical Gems'. This was a lovely session full of practical activities. My favourite part was the Area Game, which I played with Martin Noon. The idea is to take it in turns to draw lines inside a rectangle to form triangles. When you form a triangle you claim it by colouring or labelling it. Each line you draw must start where the previous line finished and has to meet the other side of the rectangle. The person with the biggest total area at the end wins.

It's obvious now, but whatever you do you'll end up with a draw - because you'll both have the length of the rectangle as your total base, and all the triangles have the same height. Clever!

In the final session Dani and Rose headlined with a workshop on workload. I didn't go to this session because I feel that my workload is as under control as it can be. Most of the big drains on my workload (UCAS references, mock marking etc) are unavoidable. A lot of the tweets mentioned quizzes, which I've been using for a couple of years now and absolutely love. Regular low stakes quizzes are one of the best changes to my practice that I've made in recent years and I cannot recommend them enough (I blogged about it here). A level marking and feedback for a giant class of 28 is the main thing that's caused me ongoing workload issues this year - I'm not convinced that quizzes are a suitable alternative at A level, but I suppose it's worth considering.

Instead I went to Peter Mattock's session 'Opportunities for Reasoning' in which he shared lots of interesting activities and resources, including this from the Standards Unit which requires students to explain what's happening in each step:

He also shared his lovely fractions activity which you can download here.

I stayed for a couple of drinks after the conference and had a lovely chat with fellow maths teachers. Overall it was a great day and I look forward to the Sheffield conference in September.

In case you're interested, my previous maths conference blog posts can be found here:

#mathsconf9 (March 2017)
#mathsconf8 (September 2016)
#mathsconf6 (March 2016)
#mathsconf5 (September 2015)
#mathsconf4 (June 2015)
#mathsconf2015 (March 2015)
Gems 8 (September 2014)

I'm going to the JustMaths Conference on Tuesday (two maths conferences in four days!) - if you're going, see you there.

Topics In Depth

This year I've been responsible for running subject knowledge enhancement sessions for five trainee maths teachers. Over the course of the year, I realised something: maths teachers spend a lot of time talking about general approaches and strategies, but very little time looking at specific topics in detail.

Examining a topic in depth prior to teaching it is incredibly powerful. Even if we've taught that topic many times before, we still benefit from taking a step back and thinking about misconceptions, approaches, explanations and resources. If we had more time then we'd be able to do this with colleagues on a regular basis. We could draw on some of the excellent topic specific resources available online, such as the National Strategy materials, the NCETM's Departmental Workshops and Colin Foster's Instant Maths Ideas. What a shame that we are so busy teaching, we rarely get time to do this.

It's very clear to me why Ed Southall's book 'Yes, But Why?' is Sage's bestselling book of the year. Rather than sharing general ideas for how to teach maths, it goes into detail on individual topics. This is what maths teachers need.

My Project
I'm excited to launch a new project! My aim is to create a series of 45 minute sessions on the entire range of topics in secondary mathematics (this will probably take me years to complete!). The sessions will cover subject knowledge (the facts, the 'why', the misconceptions) and teaching ideas (approaches, resources, good questions for assessment, how to stretch and challenge etc).

I hope that my sessions will be useful for trainees, NQTs and non-specialists preparing to teach a topic for the first time, and also for experienced teachers. These sessions could be used in schools - for example if all Year 8 teachers are about to teach indices, then they could get together and run through my (yet to be written) session on indices.

I've spent many hours pulling together the very best animations, questions, resources, examples and puzzles for my first two sessions. My first session - which I'm presenting at #mathsconf10 - is on angles, focusing mainly on adjacent angles on straight lines and angles in triangles. My second session - which I'll probably run in Sheffield - is on angles in parallel lines. I'm really excited to present what I've found. It's amazing how much there is to say on each of these topics if we really look at them in depth. I believe it's worth taking the time to do so.

Update: Please see this page for materials from my Topics in Depth project.

New GCSE: Done!

Over the last couple of years we've all been working incredibly hard to deliver the new GCSE. It feels quite surreal that after all the uncertainty, nerves and excitement, the first sitting is now over and done with.

Most teachers felt that the exams were as expected, pitched at a similar level to the mock exams and providing good coverage of the full range of topics on the specification. We knew that the exams would be harder than the legacy GCSE, and they most definitely were. We knew that the hardest questions would allow us to better identify the very best mathematicians, and it certainly looks like that will happen. We knew that some students would find the exams inaccessible. We still have a long way to go.

Now we're impatiently waiting for results day! And we're continuing to teach our Year 10 classes, but with more resources, experience and certainty than we had this time last year.

Looking back over the last few years, there are some people I'd like to thank for their outstanding contributions to the successful delivery of the new GCSE across the country.

Mel Muldowney - JustMaths
Mel's individual contribution has been absolutely amazing. She has written blog posts providing detailed information and resources for new topics, she has represented the views of maths teachers in discussions with Ofqual, she has collated questions by topic (I used these almost every single day!), and she's done so much more. Mel has worked tirelessly to support the maths teaching community. She deserves a massive thank you for everything she's done.

The Exam Boards
I know it's their job to deliver the new GCSE, but kudos to the awarding bodies for the excellent support they've offered over the last two years. They've done a brilliant job of keeping us informed - I've been particularly impressed by their instant responses to queries on Twitter. They've also provided quality resources both for teaching and assessment. Special mention to AQA for their Teaching Guidance, to Edexcel for their new content resources and to OCR for their Check-In Tests. Our competitive awarding bodies strive to deliver excellent customer service and quality materials, and us maths teachers have certainly benefited from this over recent years.

The Resource Makers
This time two years ago I was worried that new GCSE topics were woefully under-resourced. But thanks to the hard work of teachers who generously share their resources for free, there hasn't been a single lesson in the last two years where I haven't used high quality resources. There are too many individuals to list here, but they know who they are! Social media has enabled maths teachers to collaborate nationally like they never could before. Thank you to everyone who has made that happen.

The Teachers
I know we're still waiting for results, but I really think that all maths teachers across the country deserve a pat on the back for delivering the new GCSE. We didn't ask for a new qualification, and we weren't happy about the rushed implementation. Admittedly, we've moaned a fair amount along the way. We've been anxious and uncertain at times, but we've gone into classrooms everyday and delivered maths lessons with expertise, professionalism and enthusiasm. Today we should take a moment to celebrate. Job done.

And now... let's do it all over again!

5 Maths Gems #73

Welcome to my 73^rd gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. GCSE Paper 2 and 3
So, we've had the first new GCSE papers! Like everyone else, I was full of nerves and excitement on the day. Years of preparation and it finally happened. Many teachers will see their Year 11 students for revision sessions at some point over the next two weeks. If you're looking for resources for those sessions, check out Adam Creen's post where he has collated all the practice papers for Edexcel that were made after Paper 1. There's a lot to choose from! If you're AQA then head over to corbettmaths.com for practice papers. Students should continue to revise all topics, even if they appeared on Paper 1, but these resources are helpful for focusing specifically on topics that haven't yet come up.

2. GCSE Workout
Sticking with GCSE revision - a lot of people (including me) used @Adam SmithMaths' non-calculator Higher workout with their Year 11s the day before Paper 1. It took my students a good 45 minutes to complete, and uncovered a number of gaps in their knowledge. I've now made a calculator version - you can download this Higher GCSE workout from TES. Thanks to @onechriswhite who has made a helpful tip sheet to go with this resource

I've also created two shorter calculator workouts. These are intended to be used in pre-exam breakfast revision sessions and should each take 15 - 30 minutes. You can download my breakfast workouts from TES.

I've mentioned before that intermediate papers are a good source of GCSE practice questions, and it turns out that an intermediate question from 1997 was reused in this year's Edexcel Paper 1 (both Foundation and Higher) - thanks to Jo Weaver for spotting this. This is something to bear in mind for future years - old intermediate questions probably won't be used again, but intermediate papers remain a helpful resource for GCSE students.

3. Parabolator
On the odd occasion that I make my own resources, I sometimes need an online tool to sketch a simple graph. When I made my quadratic inequalities resource I used graphsketch.com, but even that isn't quite as clutter-free as I'd like. I'm pleased that @theshauncarter has now made a lovely user-friendly tool called Parabolator. With this tool you simply move a parabola to the required position and mark some points, then the sketch is instantly available to paste into resources. Read Shaun's post for more information.

4. A Level Summer Work

I find that setting summer work for students before they start A level maths is a bit hit-and-miss, particularly given that some students don't decide they want to do maths until the first day of Year 12. But, like many schools, we do have A level induction days coming up and this is a good opportunity to set some kind of preparatory tasks for our Year 11s who plan to take maths next year.

It's worth reading Kim Pitchford's (@ms_kmp) post 'Pre-A level skills boost'. She has produced a booklet full of enriching maths-related activities that students can do over summer, including playing Sumaze and watching Numberphile videos.

Another tool that's worth a look is Bridge It! which is an excellent MEI quiz game to support preparation for post-GCSE maths. Students register and then work their way through a series of levels ranging from basic arithmetic to trigonometry and vectors. 

5. Problems Booklet
Sandra from mathsbox.org.uk has shared a free booklet containing 55 maths problems.

This prompted me to tidy up my Problem Solving Resources page where you'll find similar resources for both primary and secondary school students.

Update
In case you missed them, here are my recent posts:

• New A Level Timings
• #malcolmswanday
• Calculators for the New A Level

Over the coming months I'll probably be blogging a fair amount about preparing for the new A level. As soon as I get some gained time it will be my main focus. There's lots to do - schemes of work, resources, content splits and so on. I'll be preparing to teach mechanics for the first time too.

I'm speaking at two conferences in the coming months - #mathsconf10 in London and #mathsconf11 in Cardiff. Both are on Saturdays and only cost £25 so do come along if you can. My workshops are part of a new series of talks where I will look in depth at specific topics, speaking about approaches, misconceptions and resources.

I will also be attending the JustMaths Conference on 27th June which I'm really looking forward to.

Tickets are currently on sale for my exciting summer maths teachers' event - check out summaths.weebly.com for details.

On my @Team_Maths1 account I've shared some classic resources over half-term, so if you're on Twitter do check it out.

Finally, I'll leave you with a nice puzzle shared by @solvemymaths via @sansu_original. I don't often make time to try random maths puzzles but I had a quick go at this and enjoyed it! What's the ratio AB:BC?