5 Maths Gems #143

Welcome to my 143^rd gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers. 

1. Place Value Tool

When making the CPD course Marvellous Maths 2 I struggled to find a virtual manipulatives tool that really effectively conveyed the relative sizes of tenths, hundredths, thousandths and so on. Luckily James and Nicola from MathsPad watched the course and this prompted them to go off and make one!

What they have produced is incredible. Freely available to all, this tool gives you the opportunity to fully explore place value with students to really deepen their understanding. 

Do have a play with it. It's awesome.

James and Nicola have also started publishing their Curriculum Booklets which are packed full of brilliant activities. Read their latest update for more information about their excellent booklets. 

2.  Powers

I really like the ideas explained in this Twitter thread from Sam Blatherwick (@blatherwick_sam). When teaching fractional powers, he gives his students a power chart like this:

Students can use these charts to answer questions like this:

Read Sam's thread for the full description of how he uses this chart to develop understanding. 

I really like this. It reminded me of my favourite indices resources - Mental Mathemagician from yummymath.com, and 3 Power Line and 5 Power Line from Don Steward.

3. New App

I don't often feature resources that aren't free but this one caught my eye. The Arc Maths app (@ArcMathsApp) has been developed by a maths teacher and looks rather good. 

It's aimed at students aged 11 - 16 and gives users a highly personalised experience. Schools with access to iPads can subscribe and make use of this app in the maths classroom, in tutor time or in intervention. 

I don't know many state schools with class sets of iPads, but it's worth knowing that parents can subscribe to this app for their child at a cost of £3.49 a month. This may be something that schools can advise parents to invest in if they ask for ideas of how to help boost their child's maths grade.

4. CPD

The collection of free CPD videos from the Loughborough University Mathematics Education Network is brilliant. Maths teachers looking for CPD for either themselves or their department would benefit from exploring the videos on offer. The latest addition is Improving Language Use in Maths by Dani Quinn.

5. Simple Linear Graphs

As I mentioned in Gems 141, Dan Draper (@MrDraperMaths) has published loads of great blog posts lately. His post 'x=a, y=b: When?' looks at curriculum and concept development through a series of well-designed tasks.

Update
I enjoyed the first day of the MA conference. Delegates who attended my session can download my slides here. And you can listen to the post-conference podcast with me and Craig Barton here.

Did you see my recent blog post? I wrote about the The Power of Modelling and Exemplars.

If you enjoy my blog posts then you can subscribe here. You will only be emailed when I publish a new post, which is normally once every three or four weeks.

I'm very glad to be on my Easter break after a crazy Spring term. As well as attending the three-day MA Conference, my holidays will mainly consist of hanging out with my lovely daughters, and completing endless Only Connect style puzzle grids from the website puzzgrid.com (which I am a bit addicted to). I'm trying to keep work to a minimum this Easter because I desperately need a rest, but I do have a few things coming up over the next two weeks:

• I'll be reading Michael Pershan's book 'Teaching Maths with Examples' which looks excellent.
• I'll be recording a podcast with Ben Orlin, chatting about bygone maths symbols
• I'll be attending #GLTBookClub on 13th April. We'll be talking about Chapter 18 (angles in polygons) from my book A Compendium of Mathematical Methods.

I'll leave you with the news that Tarquin are now taking orders for empty protractors. I spoke about this idea in my Angles in Depth CPD. A lot of the mistakes made in measuring angles come from students relying on reading scales on protractors (which they often misread) rather than using reasoning. Protractors without numbers help students think logically about the measure of turn. 

This is exciting! @TarquinGroup now have the Empty Protractor and teacher resources available to order https://t.co/C1jJ9Lit3H alongside some of my practice tasks. @LboroMEC @mathsjem @boss_maths @MathsPadJames @mrbartonmaths @edsouthall #mathscpdchat pic.twitter.com/XVoDwPtvuO

— Tom Francome (@TFrancome) March 30, 2021

 

Two Maths Apps for Children

A little while ago I had a comment on my blog from a parent who asked if I could recommend some apps for their children. I couldn't at the time, but now I can. I recently did some work researching some of the best apps related to maths, logic and problem solving for all Key Stages (from age four through to eighteen). There are many! In the process of doing this research I downloaded some brilliant apps for my own children to try out. My daughters Maddie (7) and Hettie (5) got to be my guinea pigs, and thankfully they really loved the apps I chose for them. I've decided to write about two of my favourite apps here. This is the first time I've written a post aimed at parents rather than teachers. Note that I bought these apps myself - no one has paid me to promote their app (I don't do that!).

Thinkrolls
As I write this post my five year old is sitting next to me playing Thinkrolls. She loves it! Every now and then she asks me to give her a hint when she gets stuck. I try not to give her a hint - I know she can work every level out herself, once she's had a think about it. Thinkrolls is a beautiful little game and absolutely perfect for her age. Easy mode is aimed at three to five year olds and hard mode is for ages five to eight. The idea is to move cute little characters around mazes. It takes logic and creative thinking. It's super fun, and well worth the £3.99.

I've always been really hesitant about paying for apps but now I realise that's a bit silly - I buy books and board games, I rent films and subscribe to Netflix, I pay for swimming lessons and Kung Fu and so on - so I'm not sure why I thought that I shouldn't spend £3.99 on a clever little educational app.

I'm very pleased to see that the developer of Thinkrolls has a number of similar apps so that when we finish the first Thinkrolls we can try another one in the series. 

Slice Fractions
My seven year old has been playing Slice Fractions. This is directly related to the maths curriculum but I don't think she thinks of it as a maths game. To her it's just a game involving woolly mammoths in funny hats.

She's done a little bit of work on fractions at school but she's very much a novice. As soon as the app introduced fraction notation she started to find it a bit tricky because she doesn't know the basic concepts (eg what a quarter is), but she's not been put off. She loves it and she seems to be picking up the concepts pretty quickly. The makers of this app say that research shows that "Slice Fractions significantly improved students’ performance in a very short amount of time". So perhaps this game will help to develop my daughter's understanding of fractions, as well as giving her opportunities to solve problems and think logically. And even if it doesn't help her understand fractions better, then there's no downside because to her it's just a fun game.

Slice Fractions is £3.99, and there's a sequel (Slice Fractions 2).

If you have children a similar age to mine, I recommend both Thinkrolls and Slice Fractions. In my opinion they're worth buying.

The other maths apps that are really well respected are those from Dragonbox. They have apps for kids from age four up to teenagers (including algebra for both five and twelve year olds). I haven't tried them yet but I've heard they are awesome.

By the way - I haven't featured the brilliant apps Box Island and Sumaze Primary here because I've blogged about them before. I should mention Numberblocks though - they have two lovely apps, one of which is free.

Enjoy!

My guinea pigs!