5 Maths Gems #75

Welcome to my 75^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. New Displays
I recently updated my displays page with some lovely new resources. This might be useful for teachers preparing their classrooms or corridors for September. One of my favourites is the new Maths Word of the Week display from @missradders.

2. Algebra Maze
Last month I joined the MA and received an exciting parcel full of publications. This included an edition of Mathematics in School in which I spotted this algebraic expressions maze from MEI.

The MEI wrote eleven consecutive articles for Mathematics in School and are soon to start up again. You can access all eleven of these MEI Insights here - thanks to @MEImaths for sharing these.

3. New A level Resources
I now have a page of resources for new A level topics. It's much like my new GCSE support page, but I'm still hunting for resources.

Thankfully a few new A level resources have been published recently:

• Jamie Frost (@DrFrostMaths) has started to share his new A level PowerPoints (these accompany the Pearson textbook). On his new A level page, Jamie has also shared his excellent guide to the Classwiz calculator, his school's new A level scheme of work, and a compilation of STEP/AEA/MAT questions by topic.
• Jack Brown (@TLMaths) has shared around 300 videos for students for the new A level. 
• Dr Madas has started adding new specification IYGB papers to his brilliant collection.
• MEI have shared some samples of the resources from their new schemes of work. 

4. Sector Area

In my post 'Polygraph Rocks' I wrote about the wonderful Desmos classroom activities. There's now a huge collection of activities on Desmos - they're definitely worth exploring. These lessons are really easy to run and work well if you have access to a decent IT room or if your students have tablets or laptops in the classroom. I spotted 'Sector Area' on Twitter recently and really like the way it's designed. It's a proportional reasoning activity in which students explore the relationship between circle area, sector area, and sector angle.

5. xaktly
I found the website xaktly.com by Dr Jeff Cruzan (@DrCruzan) which is like an online textbook for maths, physics, chemistry and biology. The maths section contains very clear explanations and some helpful graphics on misconceptions, definitions and methods.

The page on the metric system is a good example - Dr Cruzan's method for unit conversions is interesting and worth a look.

There's lots of A level content, including a page on optimisation with very useful example problems. 

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

• Bridging the Gap... Revisited
• What did I miss?
• Strength in Numbers
• The Folder Experiment... Revisited

I also published a list of maths education conferences for 2017/18 and my case study was featured on mtpt.org.uk.

My Summaths event is in three weeks and now I've seen the programme of workshops I'm even more excited. I'm also really pleased that I've had some generous donations of freebies to hand out on the day. There are still a few tickets left and booking closes on 14th August.

Do check out Craig Barton's latest podcasts and Adam Creen's list showing where to buy the cheapest calculators this summer.

In case you missed it, I'll leave you with this wonderful news about the success of the UK team at this year's International Maths Olympiad in Rio. The UK finished in ninth place, out of 111 participating countries, and top of all European nations for the first time ever.

The UK is hosting the International Maths Olympiad in 2019. Incidentally, Dr Geoff Smith's 'Advice to Young Mathematicians' is worth reading.