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.

5 Maths Gems #194

Welcome to my 194^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. 1st Class Maths 

It's great to see more A level resources from 1st Class Maths. There's now a full collection of excellent exam style questions for the statistics content of AS level maths, and now he's started to add mechanics exam style questions too. Unlike collections of exam questions on other websites which are often just made using ExamWizard, these questions are totally original and carefully thought through, meaning this is an excellent resource for use in lessons or for homework or revision.

I've added these to my Mechanics resource library. 

Also check out the accompanying videos which are very high quality and well explained as always.

2. Dr Austin

Thank you to Dr Austin for continuing to add incredibly useful resources to her website. Recent additions include multi-step trigonometry problems and a Pythagoras Pile Up.

There are also some new resources for congruency proofs, a topic that has always been under resourced. 

Dr Austin also continues to grow her A level collection. Recent additions include resources for binomial expansions and trigonometry.

3. Circle Theorems

Dan Lewis' post on Bluesky about angles in the same segment got me thinking about how I don't provide enough non-examples when teaching circle theorems (see Task 2 below). 

4. M4TH5
The website m4th5.co.uk has been redesigned. It features a number of free resources including a free and easy to use calculator emulator, interactive A level maths flashcards, an AS Further Maths Starter generator and a 100-mark A level exam paper with worked solutions (which is free, but only if you create an account). 

5. RISPs
Many of you will already be familiar with Jonny Griffiths' RISPs - a collection of open-ended investigative activities aimed at A level students. Jonny has updated the collection and created a new RISPs eBook which can be accessed at risps.co.uk. Thank you Jonny!

Update

TMUA

I have a number of students taking TMUA in January so am very grateful for the resources that have been shared for this. @andrewmaths1 has posted an excellent set of questions in a blog post and @etzsmc has shared another set of TMUA notes and exercises on TES: this time for TMUA Paper 2 on Logic and Proof. 

Conference Dates

Complete Maths conference dates for 2026 have been published. #mathsconf40 is on 7th March in the South, #mathsconf41 is on 6th June in the Midlands and #mathsconf42 is on 17th October in the North. As always, I'll attempt to attend all three if I can afford to.

The MEI Conference takes place on 2nd and 3rd July 2026 at Keele University. I'm speaking on the Friday so will be there then, and may also attend on the Thursday, depending on my timetable and school commitments. If I can't get the Thursday off school then I will still endeavour to attend the conference dinner on the Thursday night (a free bar sponsored by Casio is not to be missed!) Have I mentioned that I absolutely love the MEI Conference? I highly recommend it.

Subject Associations
No doubt you're aware that the long-awaited merger of maths subject associations has now happened and the Association for Mathematics in Education (AMiE) has been born. Congratulations and well done to everyone involved in this lengthy process. It's going to be great to have a single body representing maths teachers in the UK.

News from me

My latest post 'Things I assumed you knew' went down well, with a lot of readers getting in touch to say that they learnt something new from it (particularly the quick way of using equation editor).

I'm looking forward to reading Tom Briggs' book 'The Mathematicians' Library: The Books That Unlocked The Power Of Numbers' which my husband kindly bought me for Christmas. 

Thank you to Jamie Frost for hosting drinks at his house followed by a meal at his local pub just before Christmas. As always it was lovely to catch up with this brilliant bunch of maths teachers.

Finally, I'll leave you with this brilliant 3D printed tool for drawing trig graphs from @thechalkface.bsky.social.

Happy New Year everyone! All the best for 2026.

5 Maths Gems #193

Welcome to my 193^rd gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. 1st Class Maths 

I'm always happy to see new resources from 1st Class Maths. The latest is a set of exam style questions (in both AQA and Edexcel style) on reverse percentages.

Resources for compound interest and loci are coming soon.

2. Certificate in Further Maths

AQA's Certificate in Further Maths is a very popular qualification - I have a page dedicated to it here. I like Andy Lutwyche's latest resource: a Further Maths topic list with examples of questions for every topic. There are two versions: one with Sparx Codes, one without. This is a really helpful revision resource for students. Thank you Andy!

3. Dr Austin

Dr Austin has published some new percentages resources including Mixed Percentage Change Fill in the Blanks.

And for A level, there are new resources for graphical inequalities, algebraic fractions and algebraic division. 

4. Quadratic Inequalities

@AddvanceMaths published a booklet for teaching quadratic inequalities. It starts with prerequisite skills (solving quadratics, drawing inequalities on number lines and sketching quadratic graphs). It then has examples of how to solve quadratic inequalities, loads of increasingly difficult practice questions, and some problem solving.  Answers are provided too.

5. Circle Theorems

@MrLevMaths created a great set of questions which interweave circle theorems and trigonometry.

Update

• Maths teacher Peter Browne emailed me about his website IGCSEMathsTutor.com which has impressive online practice sheets like this one on Changing the Subject of a Formula. 
• Hannah Kettle continues to build her collection of cover resources at hannahkettlemaths.co.uk/cover.
• Paul Rowlandson published a new blog post 'Thinking About Perpendicular Bisectors'.
• Stephen Cox shared some really useful resources for TMUA preparation.
• Good news! AQA have made Maths ExamPro totally free for AQA Centres.
• Did you catch my recent post about adapting worksheets? It was nice to get some comments on this post and a few teachers even sent me their scaffolded resources which was fantastic.

I had a great day out at #mathsconf39 in London a couple of weeks ago. It was very well attended. I presented on Don Steward's resources. Loads of people told me they'd never heard of Don Steward - this made me sad, and I realised how important it is to keep sharing his tasks and make sure that new teachers joining the profession are made aware of everything he so generously shared. 

Read Atul Rana's blog post for a great write up of #mathsconf39. As always happens in October, this mathsconf was the day after an Inset Day for me, so I had the pleasure of attending maths conferences two days in a row. Here's a photo of part of my team at Inset Day on the Friday, and a photo from the pub after #mathsconf39 on the Saturday. 

Finally, I'll leave you with this video from Mitchell and Webb which made me laugh.

 

5 Maths Gems #170

Welcome to my 170^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. GCSE Revision Mats and Papers

I have a page dedicated to GCSE revision resources and in my last gems post I shared some new additions to this page. Since then a few more new resources have been shared:

• @MrMorleyMaths created a Foundation revision mat. It should be printed as a double sided A3 sheet - one side has an example or explanation, the other a corresponding exam style question.
• @1stclassmaths shared another completely original practice paper for AQA 1F, created using high frequency topics. This is part of a fantastic set of well-written practice papers for both Edexcel and AQA, available on 1stclassmaths.com. I used Higher Paper 1B in a Year 11 lesson on Thursday - there are loads of great questions in there.
• Third Space Learning has a number of GCSE revision resources, available for free if you enter your email address. Their collection includes practice papers, worksheets and revision mats.
• @MattTheApp shared a free AQA Foundation revision mat for Paper 1, featuring worked examples, rehearsal questions and answers.

Also - this isn't GCSE but will be helpful to A level Further Maths teachers - @ECR_Maths made a warm up grid for her AS Further Maths students to do before AQA Paper 1.

2. TES Author

I was delighted to discover a fantastic collection of resources on TES from @HTMaths. I've already started to make good use of these. Last week I used Exponential Equations (Index Laws) in a Year 11 revision lesson which worked really well. 

I also used GCSE Trigonometry - Exact Values which was very useful.

There are loads of great resources here for both Key Stage 3 and 4 - I've added many of them to my resource libraries. 

3. Brackets
I really like this double brackets task from Karen Hancock. Thanks Karen!

 

4. Dr Austin

Dr Austin completed her collection of 23 revision grids, which are designed for IGCSE but useful for GCSE too. Thanks Amanda!

She has also been producing other great resources including tasks for rearranging formulae and bounds.

5. MathsPad

MathsPad is my favourite maths resources website - I use it every day at both Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. And the booklets are incredibly useful for cover lessons! They've recently added some excellent new features:

• Their new free Interactive Graphing Tool allows you to draw functions, lines and points on a grid. You can include sliders - the interface is really easy to use. It projects well on a screen and you can also use it to make customised blank grids that can be exported to PDF to printing.
• Not free, but well worth the subscription, is the new Graphing Inequalities Tool which has a manual fill tool for shading regions bounded by lines. Along with this are three new lessons including student worksheets.

• There are also two brilliant new booklets for Higher GCSE: Expressions, which includes equating coefficients and proof, and Circle Theorems.  

Update

At my school Year 11 don't have study leave until after half-term, so I still have another six lessons with my class, plus my last Papers Society of the year, plus breakfast warm ups on Friday. I'm using a variety of non-calculator resources including my revision workouts, revision mats and breakfast activities. 

I'll be speaking at three conferences this term:

• A Future Teaching Scholars event in Birmingham on 20th May where I'm presenting 'Challenge in the Maths Classroom'
• #mathsconf32 in Derby on 24th June where I'm presenting 'Challenge without Acceleration' 
• The MEI Conference in Keele on 29th June where I'm presenting 'Good Task, Bad Task'.

I hope to see lots of you at these events.

Have a great week everyone!