5 Maths Gems #200

Welcome to my 200^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. MathsPad
MathsPad's May and July updates includes lots of fantastic new resources.

Their Topic Key Facts Sheets are designed in a two-column question and answer format, so that pupils can self-test by covering up the second column. Very helpful for revision at Key Stage 3 and 4, they can be found at the top right of their curriculum pages.

MathsPad has also shared two packs of 'Grade 9 Club' Question Packs: Pack A and Pack B. These include worked solutions for each question. 

They have also published a series of Foundation One Markers containing non-calculator one mark questions for GCSE Foundation on a mixture of topics. The skills recur from one sheet to the next, so pupils get repeated practice of each skill.

There's other new resources too, including more in the Building Blocks range (aimed at secondary school students who need support with the basics), more Higher GCSE revision packs, and an inverse functions matching activity. We love MathsPad at my school - it's well worth the subscription.

2. X Why
Andy of m4th5.co.uk has shared a graphing tool for classroom use: X Why. It can be used to see graph transformations happen, draw instant inverses, put your own labels on curves and points, see integrals and areas under curves, draw tangents and normals and much more. Graphs can be exported to worksheets and presentations, and axes are auto-scaled for degrees and radians.

3. NCETM Professional Development Materials

The final set of the NCETM's Key Stage 4 Professional Development Materials is now available, completing the full suite of Secondary Mastery Professional Development Materials for both KS3 and KS4. This set covers Key Stage 4 Geometry including transformations, circle theorems, trigonometry and 3D shapes. As with the other sets, these materials contain lots of fantastic ideas for getting your students thinking. For example, there's a task where students are asked to identify which of the diagrams correctly show the alternate segment theorem.

I also like what they've done here with bearings diagrams in non-standard orientations...

... and I like relating vectors to throwing a ball.

4. A level 
In my last lesson with Year 12 this Friday I will be teaching Year 2 Binomial Expansion with Partial Fractions - I never understand how anyone manages to fit the entire A level curriculum into such limited time! I'm perpetually running behind with my A level classes. But if you have a spare lesson with Year 12 at the end of term, they might enjoy this murder mystery revision task from Danielle @PixiMaths. You can download it here.

Another A Level resource that caught my eye recently was a set of statistics tasks posted by MrLevMaths. Read his blog post for more.

5. Esheets and Whiteboard Workouts
I discovered two websites that aren't new, but I've not seen them before. 

esheets.io from Richard Linnington features self marking worksheets, maths puzzles and games (including end of term maths activities) and teacher visualisation tools. I particularly like the sheep tethered to a building and sheep with a sliding ring.

Whiteboard Workouts from southportmaths.co.uk are PowerPoints that are designed for mini whiteboard questioning.

A Milestone
I started this blog whilst on maternity leave in April 2014. My first post was about a method for matrix multiplication. A lot of my earlier posts were about methods. Later I started writing more about resources. I wrote my first gems post in August 2014, when I realised that there were loads of great ideas and resources being shared on Twitter that needed to be shared more widely, so that all the maths teachers in the country (and beyond) could see them, not just the teachers using social media. Over the years I've been contacted by many teachers who tell me that they find these posts helpful, so I continue to write them. There are a number of authors and websites that have 'found fame' after they featured in my posts! 

Today I've published my 518th blog post, which is the 200th post in the Maths Gems series. I used to post gems posts every week, but it was impossible to continue posting so frequently as my daughters grew older, and my school workload increased. Now I try to write one gems post a month, but it can be difficult to find enough material since the mass exodus of maths teachers from Twitter. Back when the new GCSE was introduced in 2017, social media was packed full of teachers sharing resources and helping each other out - with another curriculum change on the horizon, maybe we will regain some of that magic once day. In the meantime, I will endeavour to continue posting once a month. If you're new to my blog then I recommend having a look at my back catalogue of gems posts. There's a lot of great stuff in them. 

Events
I had a fantastic time at the MEI Conference as always. I attended on Thursday evening for the dinner and drinks (free bar courtesy of Casio!) and all day on the Friday. I presented on methods to a lovely audience, and enjoyed trying some incredibly difficult geometry problems with Bernard Murphy. Sue Black's keynote was excellent. Shout out to Marc the tutor who sat with me and Megan Guinan after my session and showed us a fun method for factorising non-monic quadratics.

Looking ahead at events that are coming up...

• On the last two days of the summer term my headteacher has kindly given me permission to attend the Future of Maths Education event which is being held by XTX Markets. This is an invite-only event and I'm delighted to be on the guest list. I believe I'm the only teacher attending - in fact I have to go there directly after running a Year 7 trip so I'm expecting to be thoroughly exhausted... but I am really looking forward to it. 
• Mathsconf41 has been announced - it's taking place in Liverpool on 5th September. A conference at the very start of the academic year is a fantastic idea - the perfect timing to inspire and motivate. I'm not sure yet whether I'll attend - as both a mum of teenagers and Head of Department I have a feeling I'll have a million things to do that weekend. But I hate to miss a mathsconf so I will have to have a think about this one!
• BCME 10 is a big deal in the world of maths education, and it takes place in Nottingham on October 23rd and 24th. I loved the last BCME in 2018. To cut the cost for teachers, bursaries and early bird rates are available but you have to act now to take advantage of these opportunities (the deadline for bursaries is this week! And the early bird rate is valid until the end of July). Information about bursaries is here. I would apply for one myself but my school isn't in an area of high deprivation so I don't qualify. I really encourage teachers who meet the criteria to apply for a bursary to help cover the cost - it's so important that teachers attend this conference.

Update

What an insanely busy time at school! Our classrooms were sweltering when it was 37 degrees and we had a few early closures in response to parent concerns about students travelling home in the extreme weather. We also had new staff induction and Sports Day last week (Sports Day picture of my maths team below - minus four members who were busy elsewhere!). Plus I've been hosting lots of visitors in my department who come to see my curriculum in action and find out how we do things. This week is Open Evening and Year 10 are on work experience, and then the following week there are a whole load of trips to run. As I said in my post Tasks for the Summer Term, this time of year is always surprisingly busy! And the delay of SATs results will have me working in the summer holidays (even more so than usual) because I use them for Year 7 groupings.

Have a great week! Thanks for reading.