Summer Updates

I know that many of you have been off having wonderful adventures over summer so may have missed some of my updates. I've summarised them all here so you can start the new school year knowing exactly what's changed on resourceaholic.com.

Resource Libraries
My big job over summer was to totally rewrite my A level resource libraries as they were still aligned to the legacy specification. I have now published the following new libraries:

Year 12 Pure Maths

Year 13 Pure Maths

Statistics (Year 12 and 13)

Mechanics (Year 12 and 13)

They're all accessible from the top menu. I hope they are helpful to A level teachers. Thanks to Ian Tomkin who kindly volunteered to help me rewrite my mechanics page (I don't teach mechanics so I needed help with this!).

I also did some work on my Key Stage 3 and 4 resource libraries (algebra, number, shape and data). Where there were gaps, I added lessons from bossmaths.com. If you haven't seen Boss Maths before (I blogged about it in Gems 89) then do check it out. You might like lessons such as 'Conventions for labelling the sides and angles of triangles' and 'Drawing diagrams from a written description'.

I also made a start on adding resources from variationtheory.com and mathsvenns.com to my resource libraries, though this is still work in progress. And I know that some of my longer topic listings need to be shortened and improved - again, I will get to it (perhaps next summer!).

Conferences
I updated my maths conferences page for 2018/19. Please let me know if I've missed anything. I will update it throughout the year when events are announced. Have a look now and see if there's anything you want to attend. There are so many great events to choose from!

I will be speaking at #mathsconf17 in Birmingham on 13th October. Here's a description of my workshop:

If you're coming to #mathsconf17 and looking for somewhere to stay on the Friday night a few of us have booked the Premier Inn near New Street Station.

Blog Posts
In case you missed it, I wrote Gems 92 right at the start of the holidays. It included loads of lovely stuff, particularly on ratio. In early August I also wrote Gems 93 which featured lots of great tasks and resources.

In conjunction with Craig Barton's latest podcast, Slice of Advice: First Lessons, yesterday I published a post on Year 7 Maths Activities in which I shared six tasks which might work well in a first lesson of the year.

Do have a listen to Craig's podcast for loads for great advice on first lessons.

For those of you who are planning your first Year 12 lesson, check out my post from last year 'Planning for September: Year 12' in which I shared some lesson slides that you might find helpful.

#Latemaths
I launched my fourth maths social event and have already sold a quarter of the tickets. #Latemaths takes place in London during half term on Saturday 27th October. It features a book launch and loads of mathematical fun so do book tickets now before they sell out. Bring your colleagues! All the details are at latemaths.weebly.com.

Displays
If you enjoy putting up a couple of new posters at the start of a new school year, or if you work in a school that insists on fresh corridor displays for Open Evening, you can find my updated displays page here.

I'm currently loving @jaegetsreal' s lovely 'First 1000 Digits of Pi' display which really brightens up dingy school corridors and is a great talking point for passing students. Importantly, it's also very quick and easy to put up!

And finally...
I wrote the MA August e-News which you can read here for the latest news from The Mathematical Association. I also wrote a magazine article about teaching indices and an accompanying resource which (hopefully) will be published at some point in the next couple of months.

Before anyone tells me off for working over summer instead of relaxing, I can assure you that I did a huge amount of relaxing! Because I'm starting a new job, I had no school work to do over summer for the first time in ten years. I spent the first two weeks of the summer break away on a wonderful family holiday, staying in a cottage near Hay-on-Wye. I had a lovely time in the remaining four weeks - highlights included an amazing night out with friends at my first ever Secret Cinema event, enjoying two awesome escape rooms with lovely colleagues, watching numerous films with my husband (A Quiet Place is so good!), and enjoying lots of drawing, jigsaws and days out with my two daughters. I also got the chance to catch up with some friends from Twitter, thanks to Dr Frost.

Megan, Adam, me, Stuart, Chris, Nikki, Colin, Jamie and Daniel.
Photo taken by @CantabKitty at Jamie Frost's summer drinks.

My youngest daughter is starting reception next week and I'm going full-time after six years of working part-time... So I guess it's nearly time to switch the alarm clock back on. Like most people, I'm feeling very sad that summer is over but I'm sure that within a week or two we'll all be back in the swing of things.

Good luck with new school year everyone!

Year 7 Maths Activities

Craig Barton has just released his podcast Slice of Advice: First Lessons. It's packed full of good advice so do have a listen. In my contribution to this podcast, I promised that I would share some activities for first lessons (or indeed, any lesson) with Year 7. Here we are looking at activities that are accessible without being patronising, and give students the opportunity to show us what they can do (mathematically speaking) as we circulate and meet them for the first time. There are hundreds of great activities that would work well. This post features just nine examples. The pictures shown are only extracts - please click on the links for the full resource.

1. In-Betweens from Colin Foster
This is an enjoyable and highly accessible activity with a good stretch task. It will start to give you a good idea of how much your new Year 7s know about place value.

2. Rainbow Squares from Math Pickle
The idea is to find pairs of numbers that add up to square numbers (children were taught square numbers at Key Stage 2).  There is a high level of challenge as the task progresses. If anyone struggles to get started here they could be given a list of square numbers.

3. Addition Pyramids 
In Gems 84 I wrote about the time I saw this classic activity in an interview lesson. It's really simple and engaging. It looks like it may have been based on this Nrich task.

Read this post to see a similar task in action.

4.  Consecutive Chains from MathsPad
I love this - it's fun for everyone! Children first meet square and cube number in Year 5 and should be familiar with primes, factors and multiples. I think this task will be accessible to some Year 7s (perhaps after a reminder of number properties) but not all.

5. Shape Time Shape by Nrich
In this lovely task the coloured shapes stand for eleven of the numbers from 0 to 12. Each shape is a different number. Students have to work out which is which. This is an accessible and enjoyable task that gets students noticing and reasoning.

For an accessible introduction to tasks like this, check out the shape IQ puzzles here.

6. Loops by Colin Foster
This pattern spotting task is slightly more challenging, but still accessible. This is good if you want your students to start secondary school with maths that looks quite different to anything they've done before.

There are loads more lesson activities in this set of numeracy activities from Colin Foster. I particularly like 'Musical Composers' and 'Number Triangles'.

7. Number Properties Challenge from Stephen Bodman
Give students three or four random digits and they have to generate numbers with specific properties - such as 'biggest number', 'smallest odd number', 'number closest to 3000' and so on. You can download the resource from TES and it could become a regular feature of your Year 7 maths lessons.

8. Find the Factors from Iva Sallay

It's a good idea to quickly identify any students who don't know their times tables so you can provide them with support. Instead of giving them a times tables test, you could ask them to complete some Find the Factors puzzles. These multiplication based logic puzzles are fantastic. Students are given a standard multiplication grid with only a few numbers completed, and they use their knowledge of times tables to deduce the numbers around the outside. Then they can complete the rest of the grid. The difficulty levels vary from super simple to very challenging. 

9. Various Puzzles

There are numerous puzzles that involve logic and arithmetic and are suitable, and enjoyable, for Year 7s. They include Yohaku puzzles which test number sense and problem solving skills, and KenKen puzzles which help develop arithmetic fluency and reasoning skills. Other good sources of activities include Searches and Crossums from Frank Tapson, Magic Squares from Don Steward, and this page of puzzles which features Tenner Grids, Fubuki, Shape Boxes and lots more.

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After the first lesson, I'd get straight on with teaching the content of the scheme of work. We must of course be mindful of what maths our students have been taught at primary school, but take into account that they are likely to be a bit rusty after the long summer break (this applies to every year group!). If you have one main feeder school it's worth finding out if there are any particular methods (e.g. bar modelling) that your students will be familiar with.

All secondary teachers, but particularly Year 7 teachers, should know the content of the primary maths curriculum. This summary by Michael Tidd is very helpful, and perhaps worth looking at during a maths department meeting at the start of the new school year. It's also a good idea to look through the SATs papers that your new Year 7s took at the end of Year 6. To help you translate their SATs scaled score data - in 2018, a mark of 61 out of 110 (i.e. 55%) translated to a scaled score of 100, which is the Government's 'expected standard' pass mark. Of course the numbers don't tell us much, so hopefully our students will start to show us much of their mathematical knowledge and understanding over the first few weeks of Year 7. We must give them the opportunity to do so!

#Latemaths

I am incredibly excited to announce my fourth annual mathematical event.

In 2015 and 2016 I hosted Christmas events for maths teachers. Christmas events are a bit stressful to organise because of the timing, the cost, the risk of snow etc...  So last year I held a summer event at Bletchley Park instead. We had a gloriously hot day and a really wonderful time. 

This year I'm hosting a book launch! This is exciting. I've always wanted to go to a book launch...

Ed Southall and Vincent Pantaloni have written a sequel to their successful puzzle book Geometry Snacks. At my #latemaths event in Central London on Saturday 27th October, you'll get to meet the authors. Plus you'll get a signed copy of More Geometry Snacks, hot off the press.

The evening will be utterly mathematical from start to finish. There will be plenty of entertainment, including a talk from the wonderful Ben Sparks.

This is a great opportunity to have a drink with some of your favourite mathematicians.

For full details, and to book tickets, visit latemaths.weebly.com.

Come on your own or with a partner or with friends - all welcome! 

I hope to see you there.

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You can read write-ups of my previous events here:

Christmaths 2015

Christmaths 2016

Summaths 2017

5 Maths Gems #93

Welcome to my 93^rd gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers. It's the summer holidays! Many of you will be on a Twitter break right now, so this post will fill you in on some things you might have missed in the last couple of weeks.

It was in the summer holidays - four years ago this week- that I first started writing my gems posts. You can see the full collection here.

1. Triangles
Thanks to John Rowe (@MrJohnRowe) for sharing this right-angled trigonometry activity. Students have the find the length x.

Benjamin Leis‏ (@benjamin_leis) has blogged about his approach to this problem here.

If you like this then you might also enjoy this problem from UEA which requires knowledge of the sine and cosine rules - I featured it in Gems 54. It takes a while to solve! 

You might also like the angle chase problems I shared in Gems 35. I love angle chases!

Speaking of triangles, thanks to Mark Horley (@mhorley) for sharing @DrPMaths' triangle generator. This helpful tool creates possible triangles with integer sides, area and height. If you make your own resources then this will be helpful to ensure you don't include impossible triangles.

2. Sums and Products
Thanks to Shaun Carter (@theshauncarter) for sharing a new resource which he calls 'Diamond Problems'. He blogged about it here.

The questions are similar to those on this shorter 'Sum Products' worksheet which I always use before my students start factorising quadratics. Of course, as Shaun says in his post, these puzzles are suitable for students of any age even if they're not studying quadratics - they are good practice for working with negative numbers and decimals.

Thanks also to Meredith Purser (@MeredithPurser) for suggesting that students first work out the rule themselves before completing the blank grids.

We present this as a puzzle before showing the actual rule! The Ss LOVE the challenge of figuring out what the pattern is. Lots of gasps and reminders NOT to give it away. :) pic.twitter.com/VDgGQTdzoq

— Meredith Purser (@MeredithPurser) 21 July 2018

3. #midweekmaths
The White Rose Maths Secondary Twitter account (@WRMathsSec) is sharing a weekly problem throughout the holidays using the hashtag #midweekmaths. 

It's worth following @WRMathsSec because they regularly share lovely tasks for students. 

Also check out their new secondary five year plan.

4. Interleaved Homework
I have always set homeworks that directly relate to the topic I'm teaching, but for the last couple of years I have been meaning to change that. Continually revisiting past topics through homework is a great way to help students remember things.

Thanks to David Wees (@davidwees) for sharing 125 interleaved practice assignments - although these are aligned to a specific curriculum, it's so helpful to see the format and approach. This is definitely on my list of things to start doing!

5. Geogebra Whiteboard
I know many of you already use Geogebra, but you might not have seen this beta version of Geogebra Whiteboard. Thanks to Pip (@AccomplishEdu) for sharing this. The interface is brilliant - it's so easy to construct and annotate diagrams. Have a play with it and you'll see what I mean.

Many maths 'revision' videos just tell students procedures, assume understanding & student's repeat the procedure. Playing with new @geogebra IWB I have created this little 'interactive'- intended as a reminder to the student not a procedure to follow. When you think you learn! pic.twitter.com/tiOj0JjMjK

— Pip - Mathematics (@AccomplishEdu) 3 August 2018

Update
I've updated my conference listings for 2018/19. There are lots of great events coming up. Next term I intend to go to #mathsconf17 and MathsJam. And I hope to announce my own event soon...

I've been working on my A level resource libraries - they need a total rewrite because of the new A level specifications. It's a huge, time consuming job!

If you're a member of The Mathematical Association and interested in volunteering, please get in touch. I chair the Publicity and Media Committee and am looking for a couple of new members of my committee. I'm also looking for people to help man the MA bookstand at conferences. Please let me know if you can help. A small honorarium will be paid to conference volunteers.

In other news:

• Corbettmaths (@Corbettmaths) has made his new Corbettmaths Primary website live. It features loads of videos, question papers and 5-a-days.
• The MA's latest Equals Magazine has been published. This free magazine focuses on maths and SEND.
• Read this great article "How to Talk About the Fields Medal at Your Next Cocktail Party" by Evelyn Lamb.
• You'll also enjoy this brilliant post from Alan Parr "... Tables Not Well Known" about teaching times tables in the 1800s. 
• Congratulations to Nira Chamberlain, winner of the #bigmathoff. You can read a final write-up of the competition here.

I'll leave you with this arithmetic maze from @MathforLove, shared by @MathsEdIdeas. Without passing through the same cell twice, what’s the largest total you can make? This might be a nice activity for Year 7 to have a go at in September.