5 Maths Gems #180

Welcome to my 180^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Area
I love @catrionateaches's suggestion that students write a 'plan without numbers' when attempting to answer compound area questions. They do the reasoning before they plough into the calculations. See Catriona's tweet for more examples.

I very much enjoyed @MrDraperMaths's recent post 'Area's Just Times' which is well worth a read. It features a number of excellent tasks.

I also like this clever little task from @giftedHKO, from her brilliant set of resources on sector area.

2. Factor Fish

@MrChapmanMaths shared a nice resource which encourages students to think systematically when finding all the factors of a number: Factor Fish. I've added it to my resource library. I've seen variations of this idea elsewhere (bugs, rainbows) but I've not seen fish before!

3. Crossword

Emily at SAMI has shared a brilliant A Level Maths Cryptic Crossword. Maths teachers will enjoy having a go at this!

4. Dr Austin
Dr Austin has been busy producing a constant flow of new resources. I use a lot of her tasks in my lessons so I am very grateful for this website. Recent additions include resources for equation solving, probability, two way tables, sequences and standard form.

5. MathsPad
It was great to see a new MathsPad update in July. They have shared a Thermometers Tool which can be used to introduce and explore negative numbers. They have also completed their collection of Year 10  booklets, and added new GCSE Revision worksheets on Probability and Indices and Surds. We are big fans of MathsPad at my school!

Update
I haven't written a gems post since April! I've never left it this long between posts before. It wasn't intentional... I always have a lot going on in the summer term with a number of family birthdays and social stuff, but on top of that school has been insanely busy lately. 

In June I hosted the launch of Matt Parker's new book Love Triangle. It was a great evening - thank you so much to everyone involved. All the entertainment was excellent and again I thought Foxdog were the funniest thing ever. Matt's book has very quickly become a bestseller. I highly recommend it to maths teachers - it would make an excellent summer read.

Last week I spoke at the London South West Maths Hub Conference about Challenge without Acceleration. I was nervous to present to an audience of predominantly primary teachers - I adjusted my talk to make sure it covered topics that we teach in both Key Stage 2 and 3, and in doing so realised just how many topics we have in common. It was a lovely conference and everyone was very friendly.

I'm looking forward to going to Belfast for the first time in August to present on both challenge and methods. I also look forward to the next Complete Mathematics conference which is on 12th October at Astrea Academy in Sheffield. I was disappointed to miss the June conference (I was at a concert!) so I'll make sure I attend the October one.

The book Teaching A Level Maths from Rob Southern and Susan Whitehouse has recently been published, so if you teach A level then get your order in now. I have very much enjoyed teaching three Year 12 classes this year, and am looking forward to having even more A level on my timetable next year. I will make sure I get a copy!

I have had many teachers contact me to say thanks for the idea I had to stock up on the old Casio calculator model by asking Year 11s to hand them in after their GCSEs. It sounds like it was a huge success in lots of schools! Ironically I had so many plates spinning at the time I didn't end up doing it myself, but I'm very pleased that other schools benefitted.

Chocolate for calculator swap worked a treat. Thanks for the idea @mathsjem 🍫 pic.twitter.com/IiUJDmPWtd

— Drew Sherratt (@DrewSherratt23) June 14, 2024

Thanks to @mathsjem for this great idea! Definitely one we'll use each year! pic.twitter.com/saaN4AXyf7

— Wyedean Maths 🎲📐📊 (@WyedeanMaths) June 19, 2024

On Friday night I went to a fantastic end of year Maths Department celebration at Flight Club. The members of my team are all legends and I'm looking forward to working with them again next year. One week to go until the summer holidays!

I will leave you with these lovely questions from @1stclassmaths. Check out his sets of questions by topic for more like this. 

5 Maths Gems #171

Welcome to my 171^st gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. GCSE Revision Update

There's no shortage of GCSE revision resources but I made another revision mat anyway, because I needed one for a revision session the day before Paper 2.

There are separate versions for Foundation and Higher and they can both be downloaded from TES.

There have been a number of predicted papers and topic checklists made following GCSE Paper 1. For Edexcel, Adam Creen has collated them all here.

My school does AQA and we'll be making use of the predicted papers from Maths Planner and 1st Class Maths in the between-exam period.

On the morning of Paper 2 and Paper 3 we'll use my breakfast revision resources. We did the same for Paper 1 - we had two hundred students warming up in the hall. There was a great buzz and the resources worked really well.

2. Probability
I'm teaching probability to Year 7 after half term. I'll be making use of @TickTockMaths' new resource.

I always like the style of Richard's PowerPoints - you can find the whole collection on ticktockmaths.co.uk.

@taylorda01 also shared a probability trees resource, part of his Backward Faded Maths collection. I find that this is a topic where some students need a lot of scaffolding.

3. Certificate in Further Maths
@draustinmaths has reorganised her website and added a new section for AQA's Level 2 Further Maths. Resources include a Stationery Points Fill in the Blanks and an Exact Trig Values Match Up.

This page is linked through my Further Maths page. 

4. Tasks

Thanks to @MiddletonMaths for sharing some resources on their Twitter feed. Two examples include a worksheet on finding the area of trapezia and one one prime factorisation, both created using the Pointon and Sangwin taxonomy.

5. Roots and Primes

I enjoyed this thread from @MathsImpact with ideas for tasks relating to roots and prime factorisation. Here are a couple of examples - read the thread for more.

Update

I look forward to chatting to lots of maths teachers at two upcoming events:

• #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'll leave you with this new set of free resources from GeoGebra. This includes the addictive game 'What's Your Angle?', plus 'Find the Treasure' which might be nice when teaching coordinates at primary school, and 'Picking a Marble out a Jar' which might be useful when introducing probability.

5 Maths Gems #162

Welcome to my 162^nd gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Scaffolded Tasks
Thank you to @JaggersMaths for sharing a highly accessible Pythagoras task with lots of scaffolding.

And here's an extract from another task which is structured to make it both accessible and challenging. Thanks to @scott_math83 for this set of probability tree questions.

2. Number Etymology Video

@berniewestacott shared a lovely video 'Why is Eleven not called Oneteeen?'. This is a really interesting summary of some of the etymology of numbers. I love this kind of thing.

3. Angles
Teacher and task designer @SegarRogers shared a set of clever angles tasks designed to give students a deep understanding of complementary angles.

He tweeted his tasks here, here and here.

4. Indices

@giftedHKO shared an indices task that she used with her Year 10s last week. I'm also teaching this topic to Year 10 at the moment, so this was a well-timed tweet for me! She had them complete a grid with all the powers of two through to ten up to the fifth power. This supported them in completing fractional indices questions with larger numbers.

5. Fractions
@robertkaplinsky shared a challenge from openmiddle.com which might be suitable for Year 7s doing fractions. This lovely task is written by @IanKerr_math.

Update
I love September - teaching new classes is so exciting - but it's always manic and exhausting isn't it? I've been struggling with mixed feelings in my new role. I'm loving being Head of Maths again - I've done this job before so I feel very confident in the role, plus I get to spend all my time focusing on the thing I'm most passionate about (maths!). But at the same time it's frustrating for me to step down from the senior leadership team after three years of putting my heart and soul into building a new school. I know I'll get used to it. I must keep reminding myself of all the benefits of changing role - I no longer spend two hours a day on systems and spreadsheet work, because they've now hired a data officer to do these things. Instead, I've been swamped with Year 11s asking for help with maths at every opportunity (we've not had Year 11 in this school before, so this is a novelty for us!). So I'm still just as busy as I used to be, but I think my expertise is being put to better use now. I might blog separately about some of the things I've already done in my capacity of Head of Maths, and some of the things I've planned, as this might help support new Heads of Maths. Watch this space.

Another thing I'm massively enjoying this year is teaching AQA's Certificate in Further Maths GCSE. Six years ago, my timetable was mainly A level. I now haven't taught A level for so long, I'd forgotten how much I enjoy it. Certificate in Further Maths isn't A level, but I'm teaching stuff like Binomial Expansion and Trig Identities, which I love. I have a class of 31 keen mathematicians who meet after school every Wednesday. It's going to be a rush to get through the content - this week we were doing some work on exact trig values and I discovered that their fluency in working with surds isn't quite where I expected it to be - but I think I am going to absolutely love teaching this course.

Here are some things from Twitter that you might have missed in the last couple of weeks:

• @mathsaurus shared his free online course to help students prepare for the UKMT Senior Maths Challenge which take places on 4th October 2022
• @Ridermeister shared his problem solving booklet containing 151 problems aimed at Year 13s who want to prepare for a university interview in Mathematics.
• @PiXLMattTheApp shared a tool to create a bespoke maths newsletter in thirty seconds! With this tool you can create a newsletter that could be sent home to parents or used as a form time activity.

In other news, I loved wearing my new mathsy Popsy dress 'Marva' at school last week. I will wear it again on our Open Day in a couple of weeks. Colleagues keep asking me how many maths dresses I have. Five! One for every day of the week.

I look forward to seeing you all at some of the conferences coming up in the Autumn term. I'll be doing a new 'Topics in Depth' presentation on area at #mathsconf30 in Manchester on 15th October (I hope! I've booked a train to Manchester, but due to issues with the train operator, there are currently no trains home on Saturday or Sunday. This is stressful!). I'm also speaking at the Pixl Maths Conference at The Oval on 12th October. And if you work for Harris, I'm speaking about Key Stage 3 challenge at the Harris Federation October Conference at the ExCeL Centre on 14th October. While writing this I've realised that I've unintentionally agreed to do three conference presentations in one week! Oops - sounds intense! Luckily I will be on half-term the following week to recover.

I'll leave you with this surdic expression to simplify -  your GCSE students might enjoy this. This was shared by @mathisstillfun, a great account to follow for regular maths problems.

5 Maths Gems #148

Welcome to my 148^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers. 

1. Distance Time Game

Thank you to @MrChapmanMaths for sharing this Graph Game from @davidwees. Best played on a computer (not a phone), this game is absolutely brilliant for developing understanding of distance-time graphs. It's really fun.

This reminds me of an activity I did on my PGCE where we walked/ran across a room trying to track distance time graphs. That was fun too, but required specialist equipment that I haven't seen since. 

The Graph Game led me to more content from David (listed here) including this excellent Factors Game. I played this with my daughter and we were quickly deep in discussion about factors and primes, and practising division. What a great game!

2. MCQ Generator
@mrshawthorne7 has created a dynamic multiple choice question generator. Select a topic and it generates random questions that can be used to identify and diagnose misconceptions. You can choose to hide the choices initially, to encourage students to do some thinking before they see the possible answers.

3. Percentages Task

I like this task shared by @MrsEVCartwright. Students are shown the working, and have to work out what the question might have been. 

4. Factorising Task

Here's another nice task, this time from @canning_mrmaths. It's an Open Middle task on factorising quadratics.

5. Probability Spinners

I recently presented a CPD session on probability where I talked about how spinners make an excellent fuss-free teaching tool. Following on from this, the team at MathsPad have created a Probability Spinners Interactive Tool which is free to use. It has sections on finding probabilities as fractions, decimals or percentages, expectations of frequency of outcomes after a given number of spins, and the results of repeated trials, including a bar chart representation and a relative frequency table. 

Subscribers can also access a Probability Trees - Spinners Interactive Tool. MathsPad's interactive tools are always excellent - you can see their full collection here. 

It's also great to see that MathsPad's new range of curriculum booklets is expanding, with the recent addition of an Expressions booklet for Year 8.

Update
My last blog post about resource design went down well. If you missed it, you can catch up here.

I recently recorded a podcast with Craig Barton where we chatted about teaching for depth and curriculum design. You can listen here.

I've spent the last week dealing with hundreds of access requests for the resources I store on Google Drive. This is because Google did a security update which broke all my links (thanks Google!). Links have to be fixed individually unfortunately - every evening I come home from work to find dozens of emails from people trying to access resources, at which point I fix those particular links. I have a feeling this is going to continue for months until they are all fixed! Apologies if you click on a broken link on my blog at any point. I'm working on it!

Are you going to the upcoming maths conference? I'm really looking forward to an in-person conference. It will be good to catch up with everyone. It's happening on 16th October in Kent and you can get a ticket here. I'll be speaking about curriculum sequencing in Period 4. 

Here are a few other things you might have missed:

• @jemmaths published a video 'Line Managing the Mathematics Department' which is highly recommended if you're a Head of Maths.
• @andyparkinson31 has indexed five hundred Numberphile videos by curriculum area and shared this resource on TES.
• The NCETM published an excellent set of subject knowledge audits which will be incredibly helpful for ITE providers.

Last week saw the launch of the DfE's Key Stage 3 Maths Guidance, which was written by the secondary team at the NCETM. This guidance suggests an ordering of the Key Stage 3 curriculum. I was surprised to see this! It links closely with the workshop on curriculum sequencing I'm running at mathsconf in two weeks.

The guidance provides valuable material which can be used in department meetings to help teachers prepare to teach each topic on the curriculum. For each area of maths, there are sections exemplifying the key mathematical ideas. These sections feature information on the common difficulties and misconceptions and suggest questioning and other strategies for teachers to use.

My school held Open Morning yesterday. Limited tickets plus a very clever one-way self-guided tour worked really well to eliminate any crowding. I am fortunate to work with a brilliant team of mathematicians - they are pictured below (shout out to Mariam who was off sick so missed the photo!). We will have Year 11 for the first time next year and we'll be recruiting. If you want to join our team, look out for a job advert in the Spring Term. 

I'll leave you with this units meme from Reddit which I first saw shared by @MrYoungMaths. I showed my Year 9s, who looked at me with blank faces while I chuckled away...