5 July 2025

Conferences and Catching Up

I’ve been out and about over the last couple of weeks, doing my usual rounds of the summer term maths events. I’ve been quiet on my blog in recent months, partly because relatively few new resources have been shared on social media, and partly because my day-to-day workload continues to be relentless, leaving very little time for hobbies like blogging - I’m sure many other Heads of Maths and teachers can relate to this. As it's been a while since I've blogged, I thought it might be worth writing a quick post to tell my readers what I’ve been up to lately, and what conversations I’ve been hearing in maths communities.

TES Awards

My first event of the summer season was the TES Awards. My school was nominated for a technology award, mainly for the huge amount of brilliant robotics we do (in robotics competitions we’re mainly competing with grammar and independent schools). As head of a STEM subject they kindly let me tag along to the event – I’m not directly involved in robotics so I really appreciated the invitation! We didn’t win our category but we had a lovely evening. It took place in a fancy hotel on Park Lane and was attended by over a thousand teachers in their finest attire. The event featured a performance from Hercules and a brilliant comedy set from Tom Allen. It was an unusual and enjoyable night out!




MathsConf
The day after the TES Awards I travelled to Birmingham for Mathsconf38. I always love a mathsconf – it’s great to catch up with friends and meet new people. I presented on some fun maths from old textbooks, mainly with a focus on surds.




AQA Panel
On Tuesday my timetable was clear (I taught a lot of Year 11 and 13 this year!) so I had the opportunity to attend the AQA Maths Expert Panel Meeting in London. I very much enjoyed this day (not just because it took place in a delightfully cool office on the hottest day of the year, a welcome relief from the furnace that is my classroom). It was great to catch up with lots of people who I haven’t seen in a while including Julia Smith, who is writing a book about maths teaching, Danielle Bartram, Colleen Young, Jamie Frost, Peter Mattock and Tom Bennison. We had some excellent discussions about AI, GCSE Maths, GCSE Stats, A levels and All About Maths.



MEI Conference
The MEI Conference is always brilliant. It’s my favourite event of the year. I was teaching on Thursday morning but travelled up after lunch, arriving in time for the excellent conference dinner on Thursday night. If you’ve not been before, you might not know that this conference dinner always has a free bar, paid for by the lovely people at Casio. A free bar is a rarity in education so it feels like a real treat. Dinner was great and I particularly enjoyed catching up with Anthony of thechalkface.net who I used to chat to loads on Twitter back in the day, and David Bedford who always has wise words and interesting stories to share. The after-dinner speaker this year was Rob Eastaway who did a brilliant talk on viral maths problems which I very much enjoyed.


I loved all the sessions I attended on Friday. Bernard Murphy ran a fantastic workshop called 'Exam questions that give more than they ask'. If you've ever been to one of Bernard's sessions then you'll know that they always feature a very high level of challenge for delegates! Thinking deeply about difficult maths the morning after drinking a lot of Casio-sponsored wine was hard on my brain but I really enjoyed it. For example, Bernard shared this relatively simple question from the 2018 AQA AS Paper 1...


but talked about how -4x + 6y = 0 is a linear approximation to the circle as you get close to the origin. This led down a rabbit hole that I won't attempt to explain here, but was fascinating.

We also looked at some interesting aspects of this question from the 2021 AQA A Level Paper 1:


Students found this question particularly challenging because it didn't tell them to solve the differential equation - they had to work that out for themselves. Again, Bernard took us down a rabbit hole of maths relating to this question.

We looked at a number of lovely questions in this session, and two of them stood out as being useful early in Year 12. When we have students who start Year 12 with a really strong understanding of GCSE content, particularly those who have studied Level 2 Further Maths, sometimes it can be difficult to challenge and engage them in the early lessons on indices and quadratics. So it was great to see a couple of questions that we could use in these lessons to get students thinking. This one is from the 2019 OCR(A) A level Paper 2:


And this one is from an OCR AS Paper. This was my favourite question of the day - there are at least six different methods that would work here!


My next session was 'Getting to grips with interviews' with Tim Honeywill. This was incredibly useful and well timed for me. At my previous school I didn't get involved in Oxbridge applications because we had a very wise and experienced maths teacher who specialised in supporting students with this. Now I work in a new school that's just had its first Year 13 cohort, and we have absolutely no experience and expertise in this area. This year I had to write two Oxbridge references - one for economics and one for engineering - and students asked me to help with both interview preparation and STEP preparation. Luckily the AMSP came to the rescue with the STEP support, and interview support was provided by someone in the MAT. But I realised that I seriously need to upskill in this area so I can support my students better. Tim's session was enlightening and I now have a far better understanding of what happens in these interviews and how to support students preparing for them. 

In the next session I delivered 'Strategies for Challenge'. I had a lovely group of delegates who asked lots of good questions, so I enjoyed running this workshop.

After lunch there was an excellent keynote from Sarah Hart, writer of the book Once Upon a Prime


In the final session of the day I learnt how to use the CG100 for statistical analysis. I have no experience with graphical calculators so it was good to have a play with Casio's latest model. We don't use them at my school - I really struggle with the idea that students who spend more money on technology have an advantage in their A level exams. It upsets me that this situation is allowed to exist. Maths should be a level playing field for all. It's such a dilemma - I don't believe that money should be able to buy you a better grade, but by insisting that I won't make my own students buy graphical calculators, I increasingly feel that I disadvantage them. 

Ethical dilemmas aside, I enjoyed the session and it was good for me to finally make a start in understanding how to use these calculators. I now feel ready to explore my CG100 on my own. Casio were incredibly generous, giving a free CG100 to anyone who attend a Casio session. They were also handing out amazing goodie bag as always. I will take pleasure in sitting in my Casio hoodie, drinking from my Casio mug and using my Casio pen from my Casio pencil case!



Shout out to Integral too for the top quality goodies (I love the mechanical pencil!). 


If you’ve never been to the MEI Conference then give it a go next year. It really is brilliant. It's fun to stay on a university campus, the facilities and catering are excellent, the sessions are always top quality and the people are really nice. There’s lots of A level stuff but there’s plenty for Key Stage 3 and 4 too. There are always lots of teachers there whose school or college have paid for them to attend – so it’s worth asking. 

Talking Points
I may be quiet on social media but I’ve always got my ear to the ground so I can keep on top of what’s going on in maths education. Here are some of the things maths teachers have been discussing lately:

  • Edexcel's A level papers caused a stir this summer. It seems that Paper 1 used very similar questions to 2022 (schools pay a lot of money for top quality original exam papers to be written every year so this is disappointing). It meant that students could easily predict what would come up on Paper 2. Edexcel reacted by using their back up replacement paper for Paper 2. This meant it wasn't a match with Paper 1 - there were topics like Binomial and Integration by Parts that didn't come up on either paper! But it also seems that Edexcel may have screwed up - though they haven't admitted to an error - the modified papers for visually impaired students were not replaced (did they forget about them? or was it too late to make modified versions of the replacement paper?) meaning this small group of students did the originally intended Paper 2. So Edexcel will need a separate set of grade boundaries for this tiny cohort. This has caused distress - I heard of a student with a reader who read different questions to those on the paper in front of her. What a mess. Read more about this in Schools Week
  • We've known for a while that students can use AI to do their online maths homework for them, and we are starting to develop ways to identify who's doing this and address it as best we can. They key is to help students understand the value and long term gain that comes from completing their homework themselves, which is harder than it sounds! This is a frustrating issue for maths teachers. Read more about this in Craig Barton's Eedi newsletter.
  • A similar issue is that the improvement of search engines using Google's AI has made it incredibly easy for students to find secure mock papers online. We have always experienced problems where students have got hold of secure mock papers through tutors, but the problem seems to have become much more widespread this year. We used Edexcel's Mock Paper 4 for our End of Year 12 assessments (that's the super secure mock set that's not even on Emporium) but when we marked Paper 1 we felt that many of our students had seen the paper before. It was hard to tell who'd done well because they'd worked hard and understood the content, and who'd done well because they had predicted that we would use mock papers and found them online. As we need robust data for UCAS predictions, we did an emergency re-write of our Paper 2 (a bit like Edexcel did!), ensuring we used questions that students can't find online. But if we can't use mock papers anymore, we will have to write every internal A level exam ourselves going forward which is a huge workload - and very difficult to do (every school independently writing A level Further Maths mock papers from scratch every year...? No thanks!).
  • Another interesting issue for us in our End of Year 12 assessments was a fake Casio calculator. We had a student who'd bought one from eBay to save money, but discovered in the assessment that it can't handle Binomial probabilities for large n. To me it was obviously fake when he showed me his calculator after the exam - it was shiny and felt lighter than it should - but he had gone the whole of Year 12 unaware of this. What a weird world we live in - who would have thought there'd be a market for fake calculators. 
  • There was a lot of chat this year about 'teachers' (often not really teachers) claiming they know exactly what's going to be in exams, selling 'predicted' GCSE papers to students and making a lot of money from dodgy YouTube videos that are full of errors. This issue affects all subjects - it's worth reading this Schools Week article, and follow 1st Class Maths for more on this.
  • I spoke to Dr Jen Shearman from the NCETM about the EEF's evaluation of the Specialist Knowledge for Teaching Mathematics (Secondary Non-specialist Teachers) Programme. This is done using a Randomised Controlled Trial which works by comparing the outcomes of a group of trial participants to the outcomes of a similar group which was not involved. So schools apply to the trial and evaluators randomly assign them to either an ‘intervention’ or ‘control’ group. At the end of the academic year, pupils in both groups are assessed: if the pupils in the intervention group achieve higher assessment scores than the control group, then the programme is said to have a positive impact. I find this really interesting - it's so important to assess the effectiveness of these programmes and schools need to be supportive of this. The NCETM are looking for more schools to be involved in this trial - there's more information here so please have a look.
  • People keep asking me where all the maths teachers from Twitter have gone. My answer is that they are now on Bluesky. The chat on Bluesky is dominated by a small group of maths teachers, and can feel a bit intimidating at times. But it's early days. At the moment it's nothing like the glory days of Twitter (like when we ran #mathsTLP on Sunday nights) where there used to be hundreds of teachers discussing a wide variety of topics and sharing loads of resources, ideas and advice. So yes, we have lost something that I think was very powerful in maths education and I think it's going to take a while until we get back there again, but we just have to be patient. I think the best thing I can do is encourage my readers to not just join Bluesky but also start posting on there. If you have a question, or you're looking for a resource, feel free to tag me and I will help if I can.

With two weeks left until the summer holidays I’m very pleased we’re nearly there. I feel like I say this every year, but I think this was my busiest work year ever. I’m very much in need of a rest.

Enjoy the end of the school year! Thanks for reading.







27 May 2025

5 Maths Gems #190

Welcome to my 190th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Resources Created Using AI
I posted about @DGRAIMaths's resources in my post AI Maths Resources last year. His website aimaths.weebly.com has now been updated with a new set of resources covering histograms, cumulative frequency graphs, box plots and line graphs.


Duncan uses ChatGTP to help him make these resources but he doesn't just type in a prompt. The AI generates graphs and questions but it's Duncan who does the thinking about what the tasks should actually look like. The resources follow an "I Do, We Do, You Do" approach, intended to be delivered at pace, with live modelling leading to lots of independent practice.


Duncan's aim is to break down each topic so that lower attaining students can access high level material, and to create resources that can be used by non-specialist or inexperienced teachers.

In these resources Duncan has stripped away unnecessary complexity - things like awkward language or overcomplicated scales - and introduced key representations without context at first, so students can focus on the mathematical structure without distraction.

Check out Duncan's resources at aimaths.weebly.com.

2. Dr Austin's Key Stage 3 Revision
I really like these new Key Stage 3 revision resources from Dr Austin. The worked examples at the top means they'll work well if you're setting cover for absent teachers, as well as for revision.




3. Best Guess GCSE Papers
Many thanks to everyone who has created and shared Paper 2 resources for next week's GCSE exam. These include @1stClassMaths, @MathsTeacherHub, @Mr_D_Does_Maths, @hkettlemaths@ThtPedagogyGeek, @CorbettMaths, @OnMaths, @ThirdSpaceTweet, @MattTheApp, @GCSEMathsTutor, @Just_Maths, @AddvanceMaths, @BennettMaths and @DrFrostResource and more (apologies to those I've missed - there's been so many to keep track of!).


At my school we are fortunate that we have no GCSE exams the day before Maths Paper 2 this year and we have a couple of hours where all the Year 11 maths teachers are available, so we've invited Year 11 into school to do some predicted papers that day. We plan to use the 1st Class Maths Predicted Papers plus a revision mat that I've made containing topics that might come up in the exam the next day. If you want to borrow this revision mat (note that we do AQA), feel free to download it here. Please note that I don't take any credit for writing most of the questions - I've just found questions that my students haven't seen before and arranged them in a useful resource. It's designed to be printed on A3 to ensure there's some space for workings. I've also made similar A level revision mat (we do Edexcel at A level) for our pre-exam warm up next week that you're welcome to borrow if you want.


4. GCSE Statistics
Since I started teaching GCSE Statistics as an option block course I've realised that there's a huge gap in the market for resources for this qualification. There are plenty of resources available for GCSE Maths, A Level and AQA's L2 Certificate in Further Maths, but high quality resources for GCSE Statistics are seriously lacking.

However I'm delighted to see resources for GCSE Statistics are starting to appear. This summer I hope to add a GCSE Statistics section to my resource libraries so I can signpost teachers to tasks for each topic. If you've produced GCSE Statistics resources that you're sharing for free, do get in touch so I can include the links in this new resource library.

In case you haven't seen it, statsgcse.com is a new website from OnMaths which has practice papers that students can complete online.

In my last post I mentioned @harryzafar's new website mathboardwalk.com. This collection of resources continues to grow, for example the latest addition is a resource for teaching Normal Distribution. 


@karenshancock has also shared a second GCSE Statistics revision paper at kshancock.co.uk.

5. Alpha Books
Thank you to @neechmaths.bsky.social‬ and ‪@mrsevcartwright.bsky.social‬ for pointing me towards the temporary website alphaworkbooks.co.uk from Phil Thorns. Phil has published a collection of write-on workbooks which include examples, questions, hints and answers. These workbooks are great - a lot of the tasks have scaffolded hints, so I can see loads of potential uses for them, including cover work, revision and homework. 


Sadly the company Alpha Workbooks is closing down but Phil has very kindly decided to offer the workbooks to students and teachers for free. Download them quickly before the website is taken down! There are workbooks for both A level (including both statistics and mechanics) and GCSE.


Update
Exam season is underway. I have eighteen exam warm ups to prepare and run this year, and I've only done seven so far, so we still have a long way to go! It's all good fun though - I love the summer term. And there's so much to look forward to when exam season is over. I always have a great time at the MEI Conference and I can't wait to attend again this year - I will be there on the Thursday night and all day on the Friday. Book a place at mei.org.uk/conference.

I'll also be at #mathsconf38 on 21st June, presenting on some lovely surds and algebra from old textbooks. I won't be there for the pre-conference drinks on Friday night though, because I'll be in London at the TES Awards (my lovely school is up for a technology award and they are kindly letting me tag along at the awards event!).


Our friends at Casio are keen to receive feedback on their new fx-CG100 so please do let them know what you think. They have various videos to help teachers learn how to use this new model.

In other news, Craig Barton and I are thinking about running another course this October: Marvellous Maths 4. Those of you who have attended before will know how this works: it's a full day of CPD for maths teachers, and we hope to run the same event in three separate venues: South, Midlands and North. We have really enjoyed running these courses in the past and we always get great feedback. If you can offer a suitable venue in the Midlands on 21st October 2025, please get in touch (e.g. a school with capacity for 100 delegates and good transport links). 

I'll leave you with two things that made me laugh. First, from 1stClassMaths, part of a question in a practice paper with a joke that I thought only people of a certain age would notice, but has been getting lots of attention from students on TikTok:


And some Star Wars maths jokes (see this thread), which were shared on May the 4th.








26 April 2025

5 Maths Gems #189

Welcome to my 189th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers. As exam season is fast approaching, there's a revision theme in today's post!

1. MathsPad 
It's always great to see new resources on my favourite website MathsPad. In March they published a number of new tasks including GCSE revision worksheets

This includes Foundation Tier worksheets on fractions, ratio, angles, indices and so on.


They have also shared a couple of excellent 'Mixed Questions for the Day Before' resources - one for Foundation and one for Higher. 


You'll find a link to MathsPad GCSE revision worksheets on my GCSE Revision Resources page which always gets a lot of visits at this time of year! I constantly update this page, for example I've recently added resources to help students practise using the formula sheet. For quick access to this page, at this time of year you'll find a link at the top right of my website.


One thing that I don't do on my revision page is link to the new 'best guess' papers that are published each year. There's no point in me replicating work done elsewhere - you can find links to these resources in Adam Creen's Dropbox. Thank you Adam! These resources become particularly important between GCSE papers. We can't predict what's going to be on Paper 1, but we can make some good guesses about what's left to test when it comes to Papers 2 and 3. Speaking of Paper 1 predictions, make sure you watch this 1st Class Maths video about the 'five year rule'. There are lots of companies trying to make money out of our students. It's important that we provide students with an abundance of free revision resources so they don't spend money unnecessarily.


2. Dr Frost
The team at Dr Frost have been busy publishing lots of resources recently. Something new that caught my eye are the Building Blocks tasks. These one-page worksheets for a number of different topics are designed to strengthen key skills, gradually building towards interleaved problem solving. They come in different GCSE grade levels (Grades 1 - 3Grades 4/5 and Grades 6+). Here are a few examples of the Grade 6+ resources. 




3. GCSE Statistics
Given that this qualification has relatively few resources, it's great to see new revision tasks for GCSE Statistics.

Thank you to @benrooney for sharing a revision mat for Higher GCSE Statistics (answers here). 

Thank you to @karenshancock for sharing Higher GCSE Statistics revision papers at kshancock.co.uk.

Thank you to @harryzafar who has shared loads of resources for both Foundation and Higher GCSE Statistics on mathboardwalk.com including worksheets and revision grids.


4. A Level Revision
Thank you to Dr Bennison and Emily Rae who have both shared new revision resources for Level 3 qualifications. 

Tom Bennison plans to release a number of resources on his website. His first set of resources are seven worksheets of AQA Further Maths AS Questions. Thank you Tom!

Emily has shared the following resources here:
  • editable warm up grids for AQA AS Further Maths (pure and discrete/stats options)
  • an editable warm up grid for AQA A Level Maths Paper 1 
  • updated revision grids for AQA Core Maths (Paper 1 and 2A). 
Thank you Emily!


5. 3D Pythagoras
I enjoyed this idea for teaching 3D Trigonometry from Andrew Stacey. He gave his Year 9s this diagram. He picked numbers for a, b and c and their task was to work out all the lengths and angles. In the next lesson they cut it out and assembled it, discovering that they've secretly been doing 3D trig!


Update
A new graphical calculator came out last week (the Casio CG100) and I'm very grateful to Science Studio for surprising me at school by sending one in the post on the day it was launched (engraved with Mrs Morgan, which I love!). 



In case you missed my last post, I shared some GCSE and A level revision resources that I made over Easter.

La Salle shared the locations of their upcoming conferences:
  • #mathsconf38 is on 21st June at Ormiston Sandwell Community Academy in Dudley
  • #mathsconf39 is on 11th October at Harris Academy St John's Wood in London

Exams are coming round so quickly now! It might be time to put up the meme posters (see Gems 167) to lighten the mood...






6 April 2025

New Revision Resources

This is just a quick post to share a couple of revision resources I've recently made.

I'm delighted that the Easter holidays have arrived but I think I'll need to spend a bit of time over the break creating new revision resources to use this summer. My school opened seven years ago so this is the first time we'll have A level exams. And we've been running our new option block course (GCSE Statistics and L2 Further Maths) for two years so we have those exams for the first time too. I have responsibility for running revision and exam warm ups for sixteen exams this summer....! For Year 11 that's three papers for GCSE maths, two for GCSE Statistics, and two for Level 2 Further Maths. For Year 13 it's three papers for A level maths and four for A level Further Maths. Plus our Year 12s take AS Further Maths too, so that's another two. Some of these exams are even happening on the same day which seems a bit inconsiderate of the people who write the exam timetable! It's going to be a very busy term with all the exam warms ups and revision sessions and everything else going on. Exciting times though. I love the summer term!

GCSE Maths
For GCSE there are already an incredible number of revision resources available. The qualification is well established and there are now so many resources it can feel a bit overwhelming - see my GCSE revision page for lots of examples. We don't need to make GCSE breakfast warm ups because we have the warms ups I made back in 2018 - we always find that these work really well. The main new resources we need every year are the 'best guess' papers and checklists that are made between exams - they are really helpful and I very much appreciate the people who make them (I particularly love the papers produced by 1st Class Maths) - I know it takes a lot of effort on tight deadlines. This year there aren't any GCSE exams on the day before Maths GCSE Paper 2 so this has worked out well - it means we can invite Year 11 in to do a 'Predicted Paper 2' session that day.

I had a double Year 11 lesson last week where I wanted to do something a bit different. We'd already been doing topic-based revision lessons for four weeks. After Easter I plan to move to mainly mixed-topic revision lessons (a mix of exam papers and revision mats). But for the last lesson of the Spring term I decided I wanted to do a quiz, so I made one. It's here if you want to borrow and adapt it.


This version was made specifically for my Set 5 class which is our lowest class on the Higher Tier. The students in this class should (fingers crossed) get a Grade 5, 6 or 7 this summer. The quiz starts very easy but gets harder. There are fifty questions and most of my students scored in the thirties, although the winner scored 49 out of 50. This quiz could easily be adapted for a Foundation class (my colleague Will has done this - his version is also here) or for a GCSE class working at higher grades. There are plenty of quiz questions to choose from on my 'Things to Memorise' resource.

There are a few different ways you could use this resource. Students could work in groups and write their answers down on paper and mark them at the end. I don't know if this is the most effective approach in terms of maximising their learning though. We want every student to use their brain to try and remember facts, and if they are in a group with someone who is very quick then they won't have the opportunity to do this. So doing the quiz in teams might make it a pointless exercise for the slower half the class. Instead, I ran it individually - students wrote their answers on mini whiteboards and showed me when instructed. This meant I could see and respond to common misconceptions, and I could make quick, subtle, individual corrections where needed. The questions lent themselves well to mini whiteboards as they were mostly one word answers. After each question I showed the correct answer and added some commentary if needed, and students kept a tally of their score on the back of their mini whiteboard. At the end they wrote their total score on their mini whiteboard to show me. Overall they really enjoyed the quiz and I felt like it went well. It took about 40 minutes.


A Level Maths
I wish there were more A level revision resources around! We had so many for the old C1 - C4 specification but there's not quite so much available for the new specification. It doesn't help that A level resources for one exam board can't necessarily be used with another board. During the Easter holidays I'm running a 2.5 hour statistics revision session for Year 13 and I had to make the session from scratch which took ages! At least I will be able to reuse it in years to come.

One thing I made that I thought might be worth sharing is a Statistics Quiz. I plan to use this for my starter in my Easter revision session. I made a load of revision quizzes for the old A level about ten years ago but they're all out of date now. So this is basically an updated version. I also made a Pure Quiz which I might use in June as part of an exam warm up, alongside some exam style questions.


I haven't tested either of these quizzes yet so there may be errors, but feel free to borrow and adapt (the files are here), and please let me know if you spot mistakes.


Update
While you're here, a couple of quick notices:
  • I still have a maths teacher position available on my lovely team. This is a fantastic opportunity to teach maths at Key Stage 3 and 4 (and A level if desired - Year 12 or 13 or both) at a really fantastic school. Our GCSE maths results are brilliant (we are a totally non-selective school and half of our students get a Grade 7+ in maths) and our students have fantastic behaviour and attitudes. If you live in South London/Surrey then please get in touch (I'm happy to discuss the role or show you round - email me at resourceaholic@gmail.com) or apply directly by 22nd April. Come and work at a school where it's an absolute pleasure to teach maths!
  • I'll be at the MEI Conference this summer. It's on 3/4 July at the Keele University. If you've not been before then do ask your school if you can attend - it's fantastic CPD and if you teach exam classes then the timing works well - you might not need much cover. The MEI Conference is always incredibly high quality and is quite different to other conferences, so if you've not been before then I really recommend coming this year. Hopefully I'll see you there.

That's it from me. Enjoy the Easter break!



23 March 2025

5 Maths Gems #188

Welcome to my 188th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1.  Mr Chapman Maths
Thank you to ‪@dalechapman.bsky.social for sharing some great new scaffolded resources.

The first one is a backwards faded task for recurring decimals. The scaffolding makes the topic highly accessible - this task could be used before students start constructing full recurring decimal proofs from scratch. 


A downloadable PDF and editable PowerPoint are available on mrchapmanmaths.wordpress.com - I have added this link to my resource library. 

Another of Dale's new tasks is on calculating pie chart angles - again, there's some excellent scaffolding here. I've also added this to my resource library.  Thank you Dale!


2. 3D Trigonometry
I really like these 3D Pythagoras and Trigonometry tasks produced by @tiredoldcliche.bsky.social. The triangles draw students' attention to what's going on in these questions and encourage careful thinking. 



These tasks can be downloaded here and here. I've added them to my resource library. 

3. Year 6 Knowledge Organiser
Year 6 teachers (and parents of Year 6 children like me!) will find this helpful - @missjessrennie has shared a high quality Year 6 Maths Knowledge Organiser, including a quizzable 'fill in the gaps' version. 


4. Sequences
Arithmetic sequences are full of opportunities for reasoning. I like this set of questions from @catrionaagg.bsky.social‬. 


5. A Level Resources
Thank you to @draustinmaths.com‬ for sharing some new Year 2 mechanics resources for teaching moments at draustinmaths.com/a-level.


Colleen Young's most recent blog post about A level revision resources pointed me in the direction of Swinton Maths where I browsed through some great resources. For example there are some tricky Venn questions, a hidden quadratics fill in the blanks and some Further Maths practice papers. Thank you @mrsmaths.bsky.social

On the subject of A level - our Year 13s will get their mocks back next week and I'd like to give them a few minutes of quiet reflection once they receive their papers. I used to use a '5 Minute Mock Paper Analyser' with Year 11 (for more about this read these posts from many years ago: Y11 Post Mock Exam #5minplan: Pupil Self Evaluation and 5 Minute Mock Paper Analysis). Based on this idea I decided to make a Year 13 Mock Exam Reflection on Canva. I'm not the best at design and it's far from perfect but Canva is super easy to use for things like this.


This is how it might look when completed:


Job Vacancy
All the job vacancies I've advertised over the last six years have existed because we're a new school - naturally we've needed to recruit every year as the school has grown. We're a happy team and my school is a great place to work so we've had no turnover in the maths department. But now one of my teachers is leaving us for an adventure (teaching overseas), and this presents an exciting opportunity for a maths teacher to join my lovely team. This opportunity is open to anyone from ECTs to experienced teachers. It starts in September and it's based in South London. If you want to chat about the role please get in touch. We're looking to appoint before Easter so apply quickly!

I'll leave you with this which was tweeted by @MathMatize. How would an integral symbol wear a tie...? My children were discussing a similar question regarding a giraffe wearing a bow tie recently.