5 Maths Gems #185

Welcome to my 185^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Admissions Tests and A Level Resources 

Every year in the Spring Term ‪@ecrmaths runs a series of information sessions for her Year 12 students on the main STEM admissions tests (TMUA, MAT, STEP, PAT and ESAT). She has shared her slides for her 2025 sessions. This is incredibly generous and helpful of Emily - I need to run similar sessions myself but had nothing prepared. Her resources are excellent so this will save me a lot of time and really benefit my students. 

Speaking of A level, did you see the recent new resources on Edexcel Emporium? They have shared A Level Maths Exam-Style Topic Tests for Statistics and Mechanics.  These questions are new and have been reviewed by the examining team - they are not just collections of old questions. They have also published a set of Mock Papers for AS Further Maths - this was very much needed. 

2. Constructions Booklet

Thank you to Tom Riley for sharing his workbook for constructions and loci. 

Tom has also provided some words of wisdom on teaching this topic (see his Bluesky thread for more detail):

1. Start with lots of practice of just drawing circles with compasses.
2. Go into lots of depth on each construction before moving on so that students become familiar with the language early (e.g. shading, showing points, use of scales).
3. Interleave where possible (e.g in the booklet you see circles then perpendicular bisectors then circles with perpendicular bisectors).
4. Include tasks where students have to identify which construction to use (extract below).
5. Use a visualiser.

3. Literacy and Oracy

Oracy is a big focus for a lot of schools at the moment. At my school we have done loads of CPD on it for the last three years (!) but it continues to be something we need to develop across the school. 

‪MrLevMaths‬ helpfully shared a slide from discussions he'd had in department CPD about the link between student oracy, mathematical communication and understanding. How do you ensure students know which expression you mean when you are explaining? How do you explicitly teach them to talk about their maths?

 

Teachers all say these things differently. For C above, would you say the words "lots of" "multiply" "all over"? This is a really interesting thing to cover in department CPD. 

You might be interested in the 'Maths Pronunciation Project' video I made a few years ago. Even the way we say x⁴ differs between teachers.

4. Transum

I spotted a tweet from @Transum about their interactive circles parts vocabulary tool. It might help students appreciate the number of different shapes a sector can have, and prompt questions about major/minor and whether a segment can be a semicircle. 

Transum is full of lovely tasks and tools. For example check out Tim Honeywill's Indices Challenge. 

Transum has also added three more panels to their popular Refreshing Revision tool which can be customised by the teacher.

5. Congruency

@hartmaths shared some congruency questions that he used with his Year 11s. There's lots of interweaving here - these questions feature angles in parallel lines, properties of shapes and circle theorems.

Update

La Salle have said on Twitter that Mathsconf37 will be on 15th March in Sheffield. Tickets are not yet on sale but apparently they will be soon. I've prepared a workshop for this conference called 'Fun with Factorising' which I am very excited about. If you enjoy algebra, come along!

I have a vacancy at my lovely school - we're looking for a maths teacher to join us in September. We're a mixed comprehensive school in South London/Surrey. We have great behaviour and attitudes, happy students and excellent maths results (our first two maths P8s were 1.26 and 1.22. 50% of our students got a Grade 7+ at GCSE last year, and 94% got 4+). My team are friendly and brilliant and it's a real pleasure to work with them. We are particularly in need of someone who can teach mechanics at A level, and we can offer a timetable that is majority A level teaching if desired. But if you're considering applying and you're not an A level teacher, please do go ahead and apply as we can be flexible on this. The closing date is Monday 27th January so apply quickly, or get in touch this weekend if you have questions. We will interview over the next couple of weeks. More information here. 

Finally, don't forget to check out Dr Austin's new resources - they cover circles, ratio, averages and mechanics. I particularly like her Area and Perimeter of Sectors with Pythagoras Practice Grid.