Welcome to my 202nd gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.1. Visual Maths Builder
@mrallanmaths shared his new website visualmathsbuilder.com which helps teachers create clear, classroom-ready representations. It's free and no login is required - use it to create animated visual models that show how and why methods work.
@mrallanmaths shared his new website visualmathsbuilder.com which helps teachers create clear, classroom-ready representations. It's free and no login is required - use it to create animated visual models that show how and why methods work.
2. Complex Numbers
Maths teacher Neil Kendall has developed another free resource to add to his incredible collection at korovatron.co.uk which includes Graphiti, Vectorama and Trimension. His new resource Komplexiti is for teaching complex numbers. Essentially it's an interactive Argand diagram designed for A level Further Maths but has graphing calculator features too.
You can enter complex numbers in any form and display them as points or vectors, solve any equation (e.g. roots of unity) and see the roots plotted, and plot loci in the complex plane including loci inequalities. View a gallery of its features here.
You can enter complex numbers in any form and display them as points or vectors, solve any equation (e.g. roots of unity) and see the roots plotted, and plot loci in the complex plane including loci inequalities. View a gallery of its features here.
If you're teaching complex numbers then also check out Dr Austin's new resources for this topic.
I was recently asked if I could make a resource library for A level Further Maths. I mainly use MadasMaths, ZigZag and Integral in my further maths teaching, but as both Zig Zag and Integral are paid resources it's hard for me to make a comprehensive free resource library for this qualification.
3. Core Maths Compendium
I rarely get the chance to feature Core Maths resources in my Gems so I was delighted to spot new website edgarpoels.github.io/Core-maths-compendium/index.html from @edgarpoels. This free AQA Core Maths resource hub for teachers features slide decks, worksheets, mocks, revision booklets, end-of-topic tests and exam-style papers. This collection of resources is extensive - Core Maths teachers will be very grateful to Mr Pohl for pulling all this together and sharing it for free.
4. Website Summer Updates
4. Website Summer Updates
I've seen some new websites and some website updates over summer, including:
- The incredibly useful PowerPoints on gcsemathsquestions.co.uk have been updated with November 2024 and June 2025 questions. The best thing about this site is that it features questions from Edexcel, OCR and AQA, which you don't get anywhere else. Because it pulls together three exam boards, there's a huge bank of exam questions for every topic. I use it all the time!
- Maths Rocket's question database has had a major update over the summer. Search a topic, get all the questions that have ever been asked on it, click through to the paper and mark scheme.
- Maths teacher Jon Glover contacted me about his new site mathsvault.uk. The site includes cover lesson packs and lots more. Jon is running a Countdown competition for teachers where you can win departmental access to the website.
- I also received an email about mathorio.com which features over 300 free step-by-step maths lessons with worked examples, interactive graphs, and quizzes.
- MathsPad has some fantastic new resources for subscribers including Interactive Direct Proportion Bars, Cumulative Review Exercises and new resources for a number of topics including 'two triangle trigonometry'.
My youngest daughter is now starting Year 8 - last year she used an excellent free course on mathsaurus.com to prepare for the UKMT Junior Maths Challenge. Because she's signed up to emails from Mathsaurus, which arrive in my inbox, I spotted that she was recently offered a free puzzles course.
There are 45 puzzles in the course, everything from chessboards and river crossings to missing digits, magic squares and overlapping shapes. Every puzzle is accessible enough for anyone to have a go at. The puzzles come in nine sets of five, with printable worksheets and animated video solutions.
These might be helpful for teachers running puzzle clubs. Alternatively, let parents and students know about the course so they can access it directly.
HoD Space
If you missed my blog post about my new project HoD Space then do check it out. Since I wrote it, HoD Space has really taken off. We already have nearly 300 members, which is amazing given it's been the summer holidays and a lot of people only engage with professional development in term time. I'm expecting a huge influx of new members over the next few weeks! We are still offering a completely free four week trial if you sign up any time in September, so join us now to see what it's all about - there's no obligation to join when your trial ends. I've missed EduTwitter very much since its demise a couple of years ago and I feel like HoD Space has brought that magic back! It's like Twitter but with longer answers... I'm loving it. I get to chat to maths teachers every day, and share ideas and feel inspired. And learn a lot! (the conversations about maths department budgets and about Ofsted are good examples! Join if you want to see them...). We're still waiting for responses to a couple of posts: one about Welsh medium resources and one about the exam structure in schools in Northern Ireland, so if you can help with either of these please join - you don't have to be a Head of Maths.
If you missed my blog post about my new project HoD Space then do check it out. Since I wrote it, HoD Space has really taken off. We already have nearly 300 members, which is amazing given it's been the summer holidays and a lot of people only engage with professional development in term time. I'm expecting a huge influx of new members over the next few weeks! We are still offering a completely free four week trial if you sign up any time in September, so join us now to see what it's all about - there's no obligation to join when your trial ends. I've missed EduTwitter very much since its demise a couple of years ago and I feel like HoD Space has brought that magic back! It's like Twitter but with longer answers... I'm loving it. I get to chat to maths teachers every day, and share ideas and feel inspired. And learn a lot! (the conversations about maths department budgets and about Ofsted are good examples! Join if you want to see them...). We're still waiting for responses to a couple of posts: one about Welsh medium resources and one about the exam structure in schools in Northern Ireland, so if you can help with either of these please join - you don't have to be a Head of Maths.
Update
The end of the summer holidays is fast approaching for me. I have mixed feelings about the year ahead: I'm very excited to be teaching Year 10 for the first time in ages - I get to teach surds, my favourite topic! - but I'm a bit nervous about next summer's early exam dates (two GCSE papers and one A level paper before May half term!) and the squeeze on teaching time. We don't start lessons until 8th September which is very late. I'm also worried about our Year 12 class sizes - we currently have 30 signed up for our A level Further Maths class which is a bit bigger than I'd like.
This summer my department smashed our A level and GCSE results (we're a totally non-selective state school and we achieved 21% Grade 9 in GCSE and, coincidentally, 21% A* in A level!) which was wonderful. August was a great month! I got to celebrate the wedding of Sarah, a wonderful maths teacher who I've worked with for the last seven years, who married science teacher Sam in a beautiful wedding in Kent.
And Jamie of drfrost.org married Esther in Taiwan, and a group of us enjoyed a lovely afternoon celebrating with them in Jamie's garden a few weeks later.
I'm looking forward to seeing lots of you at BCME in October half term.
I'll leave you with cute Chrome Dinosaur Game shared with me by Alex Oliinyk. This is a free, ad-free, no-login version of the Chrome dinosaur game (the one everyone plays when the internet dies). Pupils play a 30-second round and instantly have real data to work with: site-wide, the median score is about 175 while the mean is nearly 590, so comparing class data against the real player distribution opens up skew, outliers, and why the mean can mislead. There's a printable lesson plan and pupil worksheet mapped to the National Curriculum. Enjoy!
Game by chromedino.com
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