Welcome to my 203rd gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers. 1. Diagram Builder
I absolutely love this game changing diagram builder! mathfigures.com is the best I've seen. Thank you to @harryzafar for drawing it to my attention.
It's incredibly easy to use. If you want to make a diagram for a lesson, resource or assessment, you can create one in seconds.
I like the way the box plots update automatically as you add data, which means it can be used as a teaching tool too.
Built by the team at teacher.dev, there are also versions for chemistry and physics so share these with your science department. And the physics diagrams will come in handy for A level mechanics.
2. Two Minute Math
Colin Foster is incredibly good at explaining maths concepts. His new videos at Two Minute Math present mathematical concepts in bite-sized videos, mostly around 2 or 3 minutes long. You could show these videos to students, but they are also brilliant for teachers' pedagogical subject knowledge development. If you're about to teach, for example, significant figures or perpendicular bisectors or bearings, then watch Colin's videos so you know how to introduce these concepts really well. There's a wide range of videos, including some for A level topics like logarithms. I wish I had time to just sit down and watch all of Colin's videos! They are excellent. I plan to use them in department meetings this year.
3. Maths Habit
@themathshabit.co.uk is a secondary maths teacher who has built a free website themathshabit.co.uk featuring Key Stage 3 and GCSE resources: full lesson decks, worksheets built on faded scaffolding, puzzles and end-of-unit tests. I think there may be a lot of useful resources on this website so do check it out.
There's so much content I can't list everything here, but it includes 'Aiming for the next grade' exam questions.
And Key Stage 3 Assessments...
The walkthroughs are a clever idea - students could stick them in their book before starting a practice task.
There are resources for formula sheet practice.
There are also loads of tools like an exam timer and printables. So much to explore!
There's been a large number of new websites and resources appearing recently - this is definitely one of the best I've seen.
4. A Level Resources
Two of my favourite task designers - Amanda Austin and Nathan Day - have been busy making A level Further Maths resources.
On @draustinmaths.com's Further Maths page there are new resources for Maclaurin, momentum and complex numbers.
And @nathanday shared some CP1 vectors questions and a method guide, plus a great Core Pure 1 revision mat.
I found a task in Heylings that helped me introduce Matrix Transformations.
@jamiewoodmaths made a really good tool for understanding the order of operations for combined graph transformations. Try it - it's so clear! I have a related resource on combined transformations that I made back in 2014.
And finally, some challenging questions from @andrewmaths1 on surds and indices (and many other topics) aimed at TMUA/ESAT candidates but suitable for others too.
5. New Websites and Tools
It's ironic that I'm a huge AI-sceptic (mainly because it pains me to see people increasingly unable to write a letter or plan a lesson by themselves) but I receive a lot of emails telling me about free AI-built websites and tools for maths teaching. I know there's value in a lot of this so I'm sharing some of these websites here for my readers to explore and decide what they find useful:
It's ironic that I'm a huge AI-sceptic (mainly because it pains me to see people increasingly unable to write a letter or plan a lesson by themselves) but I receive a lot of emails telling me about free AI-built websites and tools for maths teaching. I know there's value in a lot of this so I'm sharing some of these websites here for my readers to explore and decide what they find useful:
- School Ninja - past papers, mark schemes, revision notes and topic questions, plus cute little jokes. It includes papers from AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC, Eduqas and Cambridge.
- Edexcel IGCSE 4MA1 Past Paper Solutions - full worked solutions for IGCSE papers.
- From @Pencil201, a lesson explanation generator for Key Stage 3. Download this one to access it.
- Wonderlattice.com - a set of 27 small interactive experiments with big mathematical ideas.
- eclassroom.org.uk - a collection of free GCSE and A-Level maths revision resources including printable PDF topic worksheets with full worked solutions, interactive practice engines for online practice, an exam paper builder and an interactive starter of the day. It also has a Maths Skill Tree system which almost 'gamifies' learning maths - the goal is to master all topics.
- milomarwick.com - 3D spatial reasoning puzzles which may be helpful if you're teaching plans and elevations.
I'm now off school on a two week half term break which is a great relief after a busy six weeks. I'm very much looking forward to BCME next weekend. Apart from that I'll have a relatively quiet couple of weeks in which I will mainly be catching up on school work, filming CPD videos for HoD Space, taking a short trip to Liverpool (my daughter is a big Beatles fan), and watching Traitors (still great, even after what happened to Hannah!). I'm also going to see Leslie Odom Jr at the London Palladium on 31st October for my daughter's 15th birthday. So lots to look forward to!
I'll be delivering a workshop at #mathsconf42 in Barnsley on 14th November. I'm excited that it's a new talk from my topics in depth series, this time on simultaneous equations. I've been doing a lot of research from old textbooks and I have loads of very cool stuff to share - way too much, in fact! So this is another job for half term: working on my mathsconf presentation. I'm really looking forward to sharing what I've found.
HoD Space continues to be a brilliant place to get support and share ideas and resources. Free trials are still available so join now at HoDSpace.com. Craig and I record podcasts every two weeks in term time where we share some of the things that are being discussed - listen to our latest episode here.
HoD Space continues to be a brilliant place to get support and share ideas and resources. Free trials are still available so join now at HoDSpace.com. Craig and I record podcasts every two weeks in term time where we share some of the things that are being discussed - listen to our latest episode here.
I had a lovely day out with my team at an Inset Day last week. I particularly enjoyed the keynote from Rob Eastaway 'Much Ado About Numbers' - if you haven't seen this talk, make sure you see it! Or buy the book. Then try his Elizabethan Maths Quiz.
Finally, I've been asked by Simon Singh's Parallel Academy to share their tutoring opportunity. They currently support 1,000 bright and enthusiastic secondary students at UK state schools (including students from my school). These students receive weekly online tutorials and they need strong tutors - you can apply via this link.
That's it from me - I hope to see lots of you at BCME, or if not then at mathsconf in November.
And if you didn't watch Hannah Fry's video on the maths of Traitors, recorded before she went in, then do have a watch.
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