5 Maths Gems #161

Welcome to my 161^st gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Mathematicians Display

@nathanday314 has updated his excellent Famous Mathematicians From Around the World Display. This features 82 mathematicians from 53 countries. 

The original inspiration came from a display by @DrStoneMaths and @MrYoungMaths which I featured in Gems 132. 

For more classroom and corridor displays for maths departments, see my displays page. 

Do make sure you follow Nathan on Twitter if you don't already. He has been sharing loads of great resources over summer including tasks on simultaneous equations, bounds and indices. For example I love the task below, which is an adaptation of @karenshancock's indices task.

Speaking of @karenshancock's resources, I also love this sequences fill in the gaps task. I've added it to my resource library.

2. Vectors Task

It's always great to see new content on my favourite website MathsPad. They have now completed their curriculum booklets for all of Year 7, 8 and 9. These booklets are full of brilliant tasks - I use them all the time.

I also love their new free Vectors & Quadrilaterals Worksheets. The idea is to work out which type of quadrilateral will be formed if you follow a sequence of vectors. This provides practice working with vectors whilst prompting thinking about whether pairs of vectors are equal in length, parallel or perpendicular, and encouraging mental visualisation. There are two levels of difficulty.

I've added this to my resource library.

3. Certificate in Further Maths Resources

In my last post I mentioned that I've set up a new page linking to Certificate in Further Maths resources. This can be accessed from the main menu at the top of my blog. Since then, I've added three additional resources to this page:

• Content list for pupils from @mathshysteria. This handy student-friendly checklist may also be helpful for teachers' planning as it shows which topics are covered at GCSE and which are specific to Certificate in Further Maths.
• Certificate in Further Maths questions from A Level papers from @tm_maths. This will be a helpful source of challenging questions.
• Videos and exam questions by topic on an excellent new website from @1stclassmaths.

4. GCSE Revision 

In the Autumn term @MrsEVCartwright gives her Year 11 students a revision sheet per week on a topic covered so far in the course. Each sheet contains a recap of the main ideas and techniques, followed by some questions to complete for homework that week. You can download this resource from TES.

Back in Gems 155 I shared another GCSE revision resource - PowerPoint files containing GCSE maths questions by topic for OCR, Edexcel and AQA. I subsequently awarded it a Gem Award for 'Most Useful Resource' because I use it all the time in my GCSE lesson planning. @gcse_math has now shared this resource on its own website - gcsemathsquestions.co.uk. If you missed this earlier in the year, do check it out.

5. Place Value

Thank you to @Scott_Math83 for sharing some new resources. I like these place value tasks using fractions and decimals.

 

And this rounding problem is great.

Resource Libraries

If you're new to teaching then you might not know about my resource libraries which contain listings of resources for Key Stages 3 to 5, organised by topic. I use these libraries every day when planning lessons as they provide a quick way to browse quality free resources. 

I try to keep my Key Stage 3 and 4 libraries updated on an ongoing basis, and when I start teaching A level again next year I'll do some work on my A level libraries too. Links sometimes get broken when people move or delete their resources - if you find a broken link then do let me know! 

I also add new resources fairly regularly. For example I've recently added more links to resources from Dr Austin Maths including tasks for indices, standard form, factorising quadratics, inequalities and graphs.

The quickest way to access my resource libraries when you're planning lessons is using the menu across the top of my blog.

Update

I've mainly been doing DIY over summer and am now a bit fed up with painting. My house is in disarray (I currently don't have a bedroom!) so I'm looking forward to returning to school on Thursday. I had a really lovely break though, which included a very sunny family holiday in a cottage in Cornwall, and a great night out with maths teachers at Jamie Frost's house (thanks @nkl_17 for the photo!).

I'm looking forward to meeting my new classes next Monday. I'll be teaching Year 7, 8, 10 and 11, plus I have a Certificate in Further Maths class who will have lessons after school. My school first opened four years ago, so Summer 2023 will be our first ever GCSE results. It's a big year for us! This year we'll also be setting up our new A level courses ready for next September. In a couple of months we'll be advertising for a Key Stage 5 Coordinator to join our maths department - watch this space if you're interested in applying!

Good luck to everyone starting in new schools this week, particularly ECTs, and good luck to those of you embarking on teacher training. September is such an exciting month.

5 Maths Gems #156

Welcome to my 156^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers. 

1. GCSE Revision 

Revision season is upon us! If you're looking for GCSE revision resources then do check out my recently updated GCSE revision resources page. With over 110,000 views since it was first published in November 2016, it's my most viewed blog post ever. 

If you're specifically looking for material related to the Summer 2022 Advance Information, then look at @Noni_Rainbow's padlet which includes numerous checklists and resources.

@1stclassmaths has generously shared a free set of practice papers for this summer's exams for both AQA and Edexcel. They are also producing practice papers for AQA L2 Further Maths: Paper 1 is here and Paper 2 is coming soon. Here's an extract:

White Rose Maths has also published a set of practice papers made specifically for Summer 2022 GCSEs.

And speaking of revision, it was good to see @steelemaths share a thread explaining his approach to GCSE revision this year. It's worth a read.

2. Dr Austin Maths

At my school we've been making a lot of use of resources from draustinmaths.com lately. Although I've blogged about these resources a few times before, I know there are still a lot of teachers who haven't yet discovered them, so do check them out if you haven't already! Many of them are linked in my resource libraries, but the best way to browse is at draustinmaths.com which has recently been upgraded to improve the navigation functionality.

Resources are now grouped by topic, for example you can view the surds resources here and the averages resources here. Here's an example of a resource I recently used with my Year 10s - they found it more challenging than I expected them to (in my experience, students always find bearings surprisingly tricky!).

3. Number Puzzle
In her most recent post, @letsplaymath shared a nice number puzzle from the website 1001mathproblems.com.

I've featured this website in a gems post before - many years ago - but had forgotten about it. It's a great website with loads of puzzles which may be suitable for students at Key Stage 2 and 3. Here are a couple more examples: first, Drafters Puzzle #2 which will come in handy if you're teaching plans and elevations. Students have to work out what the solid looks like:

A related puzzle for plans and elevations is here.

Second, The Four Paths Problem. I've seen this before but always forget to share it with my students.

Do check out 1001mathproblems.com for more.

4. Resources
Here are some examples of the lovely resources that have been shared on Twitter recently.

@alcmaths shared an activity on error intervals and numbers lines. For some reason I have never thought to do this before - next time I teach error intervals I will make sure I include number lines! 

You can download this resource, and many more, from Amie's blog.

@nathanday314 shared a resource for comparing coefficients in identities, including algebraic fractions. The editable PowerPoint is here and the PDF is here. 

@drpas1001 had a great idea for an exercise to get students reasoning with area and perimeter of circles and sectors. You can download it from TES. 

@giftedHKO shared a fantastic ratio task to get students thinking about which statements are always, sometimes or never true.

@hartmaths wanted his Year 11 students to show more detail in their working so he took a set of past Edexcel Higher GCSE questions and made them into 'show that' questions. You can download this resource here. 

5. A Level Calculator Tips

@BicenMaths has published a video containing top calculator tips for A Level maths. This covers both the fx-CG50 Graphics and the fx-991EX Classwiz models (skip to 31 minutes for the Classwiz). This will be helpful for students taking A Level maths, and also for teachers who are new to using these calculators.

Update

The Easter conferences are a grand tradition in maths education. Before the days of the internet, they were the primary mechanism for teachers, researchers and other members of maths education communities to come together and collaborate and develop the profession. I'm a big fan of these conferences and am really looking forward to the MA Conference next week. The first two days are online and the final day is in Stratford-Upon-Avon. It's not too late to get a ticket! There are loads of fantastic sessions on the programme. Even if you can't attend next week, buying a ticket for the virtual conference (which is only £15) means you'll have access to all the online workshops afterwards.

I'm doing the first keynote on Tuesday (I'm very nervous). 

If you're coming to the in-person day in Stratford and you're staying on the Wednesday night, do join us for pre-conference drinks. We'll be in the Pen and Parchment from 7.30pm. All welcome - if you don't know anyone, look out for me - come and say hello. 

In other conference news, the MEI Conference is now open for booking. This event takes place in Keele on 30th June and 1st July. It's always a fantastic conference. I'm looking forward to delivering a workshop on the second day.

Have you got a copy of my book A Compendium of Mathematical Methods? If not, have a look at what education guru Dylan Wiliam says about it. 😀

I like to think I know quite a lot about mathematical methods at school level, but I was blown away by @mathsjem's "A compendium of mathematical methods" https://t.co/O5LzpXSeip. It includes every technique I could think of, and dozens more that I didn't know. Highly recommended.

— Dylan Wiliam (@dylanwiliam) April 6, 2022

Finally, a shout out for the Glyn Maths Department! They kindly invited me to their end of term social. We did an Escape Room, which I love! What a fantastic bunch of people.

I'll leave you with this joke, shared by @OFalafel, which made me smile. 

5 Maths Gems #141

Welcome to my 141^st gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers. 

1. Tasks
Task designer @ashtonC94 has made a new website mrcowardmaths.wixsite.com to collate his excellent resources. He is gradually populating it with tasks, so do check it out. 

Ashton has shared an activity on plotting coordinates that draws attention to scales in order to tackle common misconceptions. An extract is shown below - click here for the full task.

I also really like Ashton's excellent task on significant figures. 

Both of these tasks have been added to my resource library.

Maths Gems regular @giftedHKO has also continued to share a number of excellent resources recently, including this task on gradient of a line segment, and many more on her website.

2. Booklets

@ChrisMcGrane84 has started sharing a series of curriculum booklets that he has been working on in conjunction with Siobhan McKenna (@ShivMcKenna55). Read Chris's post for more information. If you were at #mathsconfmini then you can watch Chris discuss how these booklets form an integral part of the design and delivery of his maths curriculum in his talk Designing an Effective Curriculum in Early Secondary. 

These booklets are packed full of carefully selected tasks from a range of excellent task designers. The booklets are used instead of a scheme of work - they define curriculum order and pedagogical approach.

3. MS Forms Quizzes

Thank you to @timdolan for creating a Padlet for maths teachers to share maths quizzes made in Microsoft Forms. This should save teachers a lot of time, as they don't have to create everything from scratch anymore. If you have been making MS Forms quizzes then please share your quizzes here (as a template) so that others can borrow them. I've added mine!

It's interesting to see a variety of quiz types. My quizzes feature short-answer questions, or multiple choice questions (which I borrow from diagnosticquestions.com) which are automatically marked. But there's a lot more we can do with these quizzes. I received an email from maths teacher Alison Page who turned my Algebra True or False activity into a Forms quiz. Looking at this, it occurred to me that it would be easy to turn an 'always, sometimes, never' activity into a Forms quiz, with spaces to write explanations.  Another option for turning existing worksheets and activities into online versions is teachermade.com. 

If you are a MS Forms user then you might be interested in this post from @andrewkbailey13 about giving feedback to students. My team have been giving lots of feedback but we have been concerned that our students haven't been reading it - this post answered our questions about how it works from a student perspective!

4. A Level Example-Problem Pairs

Thanks to @acutelearning for sharing a large set of A Level Maths and Further Maths example-problem pair slides with answers. These are freely available to download from TES.

5. Mr Draper's Blog Posts
Mr Draper (@MrDraperMaths) has been busy writing a series of excellent blog posts lately. They all feature cleverly thought-out tasks and teaching approaches. For example, this post on Understanding Angle Labels addresses a number of difficulties that students commonly experience when learning to solve angle problems.

Another example is this excellent post on reasoning with frequency trees:

And a great post about perimeter:

Read Dan's blog for lots more like this.

Update

It's been a busy time for everyone. I don't know about you, but my online lessons are still taking ages to plan, so I'm spending entire weekends working. I'm not doing anything fancy in my lessons, but explanations and tasks need really careful thought. I also have a lot going on in my other roles at school - I'm responsible for reports, parents evenings, Year 9 options and so on - and all of that has been really full-on in the last few weeks! Roll on half-term.

In case you missed it, here are my most recent blog posts:

• Squares (a post in the excellent #doseofdon series, written by Anne Watson)
• Tools for Online Learning (a popular post with over 9000 reads)

I recently recorded a podcast with Craig Barton where I discussed what I am doing for online lessons. Do have a listen!

I also presented at two conferences: at #mathsconfmini I did an evening presentation on teaching quadratics, and at the White Rose Secondary Maths Brunch I presented on task design. 

I hope to do a longer version of my task design presentation at the MA Conference this Easter, if my proposal is accepted. Also, following a lot of thinking recently about how to introduce probability in an accessible way to my Year 9s, I have submitted a proposal to speak about probability at #mathsconf25 in March. 

Finally, I recently produced a Topics in Depth CPD video for Loughborough University Mathematics Education Network which you can access here. It covers curriculum, history, misconceptions and resources.

I'll leave you with a pie chart that I spotted recently, which is probably one of the worst pie charts I have ever seen.

Stay safe, maths teachers!

5 Maths Gems #59

Welcome to my 59^th update from the world of Maths EduTwitter. Here I summarise some of the latest ideas and resources for teaching maths.

First I want to say thank you! Today I reached a milestone - resourceaholic.com has had over one million views since my first blog post, which I wrote when I was heavily pregnant back in April 2014. Since then I've been busy, publishing 196 blog posts and 33 pages of resources and listings, delivering workshops, organising events, and doing an awful lot of tweeting (over 20,000 tweets in two years ... oops, I got a bit carried away!). If you've not visited my blog before then you might find my guide to resourceaholic.com helpful. Thank you to all my readers and contributors, and to those who regularly use and recommend my resource libraries. I really appreciate the support.

On with the gems...

1. Increasingly Difficult Questions
I like @taylorda01's new set of 'increasingly difficult questions'. In lessons I often ask my students to try some practice questions from the board so I can check their understanding, before moving on to a lengthier task. This growing bank of questions will be useful.

2. Arithmetic Vocabulary 

I love these graphics shared by @mathemaniac. They might make good displays for a maths classroom.

3. More Displays
I also like these Command Word Posters from Christine Norledge (@MissNorledge). She first published these last year but somehow I missed them at the time.

This lovely formula bunting from Mel (@Just_Maths) is new this week. It features the formulae that students have to learn for the new GCSE.

4. Isometric Drawing
This question from @brilliantorg is interesting.

When I teach this topic I don't do enough to make the link to surface area.

Recently I gave my Year 10s this question from an AQA topic test:

Most of my students calculated the surface area incorrectly, not realising that their plans and elevations were the key to answering this. It can be tricky to count the squares on a complex 3D representation but it's really easy to count squares on plans and elevations.

5. Topical Maths
If you like maths that's related to what's going on in the news then check out @polymathletic's resources on TES. Recent resources include activities relating to the Tour de France, Wimbledon and the dreaded referendum.

Stephen Bodman (@stephenbodman) has also produced a set of Tour de France maths resources - download them here.

Update
Did you catch my latest posts?

• Join #TeamMaths in which I talked about my latest Twitter project
• Warwick 2016 in which I reviewed Edexcel's Warwick conference and shared materials from my workshop 'The Wonderful World of Maths Resources'
• Scheme of Work Development in which I shared some thoughts and experiences of GCSE Schemes of Work

I also presented a workshop called 'Perfect Polynomials' at the FMSP's London KS5 Network Day last Friday - you can download the materials here.

I was interested to see that Boolean Maths Hub is running a two day summer school for around 75 students to help bridge the gap between GCSE and A level. If this goes well I wonder if more hubs will follow their lead next summer. I'm also impressed by the work done by the White Rose Maths Hub lately in developing schemes of work and resources - including lots of support for primary teachers. 

Did you see that MEI has released a sequel to their awesome Sumaze App?  Check out Sumaze! 2.

If you're looking for resources for end of term lessons (when you only have a half a class or half a lesson so can't teach new topics), check out my post End of Term Resources. Also, don't forget Chris Smith's Summer Holiday Relay Race. 

Open Evening
I wrote a post about ideas for Open Evening a couple of years ago. Some of you won't have Open Evening until September but we had ours last week, so here's a quick update on some new things we tried this year...

In one classroom we played Memory Maths from flashmaths.co.uk. This game has been around for years but I've not used it before. It was really fun! We gathered together groups of competitors (visiting children, their parents, Year 7 and Year 12 tour guides, passing teachers...), and gave them each a mini-whiteboard. Questions flashed up on the board and players had to write down the answers if and when they could. It worked well - I love activities that engage every age group.

In another room we had a table set up with lots of Numeracy Ninjas sheets. Visiting children and our student tour guides sat down and completed as much as they could, and when their time was up we marked what they'd done and gave them a corresponding ninja sticker. We've been using Numeracy Ninjas at Key Stage 3 for the last few months and it's been going really well so it was good to give prospective students a taste of something they will actually do in maths lessons. Us teachers all had a go too and enjoyed wearing our stickers afterwards (we're a competitive department!).

That's it from me. I'll leave you with a lovely question from AQA that really stumped my Year 10s. It's a double bounds question, in reverse, with discrete data. It takes some thinking!