5 Maths Gems #178

Welcome to my 178^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Inverse Proportion
I really like this tweet from @catrionateaches. When teaching inverse proportion I always talk about constant products but then I head straight into the formula y = k/x. Catriona suggests a subtle change in method. 

2. Graph Transformations

MathsPad has published another brilliant interactive tool for the Higher GCSE topic graph transformations. It shows how points on the original curves map on to those on the transformed curves. There is a separate section for quadratic graphs, which is particularly useful for relating completed square form to graph transformations. 

There is also a section for trigonometric graphs, where transformations of the graphs of y=sin(x) and y=cos(x) can be explored.

It's great to see a new resource published for teaching graph transformations - I always find that this is the GCSE topic for which it's trickiest to find suitable resources, because many tasks still include stretches (these were removed from the syllabus back in 2017 - GCSE now just covers reflections and translations).

Do check out MathsPad's full range of interactive tools - some of them are free to use even if you don't subscribe (you really should subscribe to MathsPad though!).

3. GeoGebra

It's worth following @geogebra to see ideas for interactive GeoGebra maths resources that can be used for demonstrations in lessons or student activities. Here are a few recent examples:

⚖️ GEOGEBRA RESOURCE! 📏

Try this FREE GeoGebra Exploration resource to convert units within a given system of measurement. Check it out! https://t.co/RQuWgxlNTR#mtbos #iteachmath #math #mathematics pic.twitter.com/qbp4U8DIFj

— GeoGebra (@geogebra) February 27, 2024

📦🐭 GEOGEBRA RESOURCE! 🥡🐱

Try this FREE GeoGebra Practice resource to draw box-and-whisker plots from a set of data. Check it out! https://t.co/VsqOGblJ2P#MTBoS #iteachmath #math #statistics pic.twitter.com/GAz9gbyLAR

— GeoGebra (@geogebra) February 27, 2024

🦾 GEOGEBRA RESOURCE! 🎰

Try this NEW & FREE GeoGebra Exploration resource to convert a number from standard form to expanded form one place value at a time. Check it out! https://t.co/vAIXvL5g48#MTBoS #iteachmath #math #mathematics pic.twitter.com/UXSN3RHQ69

— GeoGebra (@geogebra) March 4, 2024

4. Pythagoras
@nathanday314 shared a clever set of questions on Pythagoras' Theorem. There's a lot of challenge here (check out Question 12). Question 3 is deliberately impossible, and note the subtle differences between Questions 3, 4 and 5.

5. Prime Factors

@StudyMaths shared a video showing how to use the interactive Prime Factor Tiles on MathsBot to find a lowest common multiple, and in response @MrCowardMaths shared this really lovely task.

Update
Here are some other things you might have missed:

• The NCETM continue to publish their set of secondary mastery professional development materials. Their first set of Key Stage 4 materials focuses on numerical structure. These materials contain lots of teaching ideas that are well worth exploring. 
• @1stclassmaths has shared GCSE Predicted Paper 1 for both Edexcel and AQA. After Paper 1 takes place in May he will publish Predicted Paper 2s, and after Paper 2 he will publish Predicted Paper 3s. These papers will be very high quality so I recommend following @1stclassmaths for updates.
• @cclay8 has shared some more of her excellent calculator guides for the new Casio model. 
• @MattTheApp continues to share numerous resources for GCSE preparation on Maths White Board including maths formula sheet familiarisation tasks.
• @AMercerMaths shared a fantastic example of a curriculum booklet on diagonals in quadrilaterals. 

My school is still seeking an A level teacher to start in September. I can offer 100% A level teaching, or alternatively I can offer a timetable with Year 11 - 13 (or similar) if that's more desirable. Our students are a delight to teach and my team is awesome. If you live in Surrey or South London, this is an amazing opportunity. Please get in touch (email resourceaholic@gmail.com) if you're interested - I'm very happy to arrange a tour or call.

I'm presenting at two maths conferences in the next four weeks. The first is #mathsconf34 which is near Bristol:

And in the Easter holidays I'm presenting at the Shape Up conference in Stratford-Upon-Avon:

Finally, it's been a while since I've hosted a social event so I'm excited about this... more information coming soon.

5 Maths Gems #121

Welcome to my 121^st gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Linear Graphs

It's always good news when Paul Rowlandson publishes a new blog post. His latest post looks at various ways of presenting information that leads to the equation of a straight line. If you're teaching this topic I really recommend reading this and making use of the tasks and ideas featured.

Related to this, check out this awesome task shared by Tim Honeywill (@HoneywillTim).

2. Knowledge Organisers

It looks like some maths departments are being asked to produce knowledge organisers as part of a whole school policy. It's not clear whether they are as useful in maths as they are in other subjects, but if you're in a school where you've been asked to produce them for every maths topic then you're faced with a mammoth task. To avoid duplication of effort across schools, you might find this set of knowledge organisers a useful starting point. Also, check out the set of  Year 7 and Year 8 knowledge organisers shared by Delta Trust, and these lovely knowledge organisers shared by Nicola Whiston (@whisto_maths). Nicola will continue to add her knowledge organisers to this folder as she makes them. They are designed around the White Rose scheme of work.

These resources can be used in numerous ways - even if your school doesn't have a policy of self-testing using knowledge organisers then you still might find this resource helpful for revision.

Nicola Whiston (@whisto_maths) has also made a learning journey for the White Rose Scheme of Work - schools following this scheme of work will find this helpful, and even if you're not following this scheme of work then it is interesting to see the way the maths curriculum has been mapped out.

3. A Level Maths Activities 
The Mathematical Association has just published a book, written by David Miles, which contains photocopiable activities for A level lessons. It's selling very well - you can order now from the MA shop for £6.30 (members) or £9.00 (non-members). I will also be selling these books from the MA stand at #mathsconf22 in Manchester.

Although it's already available to buy, this book will be officially launched at the MA Conference in April, along with a couple more exciting new publications - Geometry Juniors by Ed Southall and Hooked on Mathematics by Jenni Black. Do come along to the book launch if you're at the conference.

4. Etymology
Caroline Spalding (@MrsSpalding) shared a picture of a poster she saw in a science lab at her school. It shows etymological roots of science vocabulary.

This prompted Ben Gordon (@mathsmrgordon) to make a maths version of this which he has shared here. Thank you Ben!

Following this, Sudeep (@boss_maths) shared an amazing resource to help relate maths terms with key words from other subjects or words in everyday use.

This large (and growing) collection is outstanding. I love Boss Maths resources - they are always high quality.

I love featuring etymology in my lessons. It's great to see resources like this to help teachers develop their subject knowledge.

5. New Resources
There have been lots of new resources shared on Twitter recently. Here are some examples.

Don Steward has published lots of new tasks, including fraction shading and order of operations with expressions.

Do scroll through his blog to see his new resources - there are many!

Andy Lutwyche (@andylutwyche) regularly shares new resources. Check out his newest Transforming Shapes Codebreaker which is bound to be popular with students (and not just because of the terrible joke!).

As always, all of these resources will be listed in my resource libraries for easy access.

Chris McGrane (@ChrisMcGrane84) shared an interesting task on negatives numbers that really got me thinking.

Emma McCrea (@MccreaEmma) tweeted about a couple of openmiddle.com tasks. I have blogged about this website before but haven't had time to explore all the tasks. I particularly like this one on index laws.

Mr Russell (@mathsDRL) reminded me about Jon Orr's (@MrOrr_geek) Polygon Pile Up activity. I know I saw it a couple of years ago and I was sure that I'd featured it in a Gems post, but I can't find it so maybe I didn't. Here it is - read the accompanying blog post for the resource, discussion, and a more difficult version.

Update
Here are my recent blog posts in case you missed them:

• Rule of Three
• Know Your Workings

On Monday I visited Sheffield to record another two Topics in Depth video CPD podcasts with Craig Barton. You can check out our indices and angles in parallel lines videos if you missed them. Hopefully the next two will be published by TES soon.

My book is still getting good feedback - I am always delighted to receive tweets from teachers who have learnt something new from it.

I was also chuffed to see my book shortlisted for the Chalkdust Book of the Year 2019. You can read the Chalkdust review of my book here and vote for it here (though to be fair, all these books are awesome and deserve more votes than mine!).

I'm looking forward to two big events that are coming up soon. On Pi Day I will be in Manchester for #mathsconf22, presenting a new talk from my Topics in Depth project: Surds in Depth.

In the Easter holidays I will be presenting at the MA Conference. I can't wait for this: two nights in a spa hotel with loads of amazing workshops and plenty of entertainment.

At the MA we're really pleased that our new conference format has been so well received. Over one hundred delegates have already booked their place. There aren't many full residential places left so book now!

I recently passed a milestone of 30,000 followers on Twitter. I'm not sure there are many other females on EduTwitter who have done this and are still teaching. I'm pleased people find my account useful, and I really appreciate the support.

Finally, did you see the Joanne dress from Popsy? If, like me, you enjoy going to work (and maths conferences) in mathematical attire, then you'll like this one...

5 Maths Gems #117

Welcome to my 117^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Ratio 
My favourite maths blogger Paul Rowlandson has written another brilliant blog post - this one looks at various ways of thinking about how to make functions and equations out of pairs of equivalent ratios.

2. Berwick Maths
Joe Berwick (@BerwickMaths) launched a new website berwickmaths.com where he shares the worked examples he uses in lessons from Key Stage 3 up to Key Stage 5. Read the homepage and Joe's blog for more information on what it's all about.

3. Interleaving

Jason Steele (@steelemaths) shared a set of tasks where topics are interleaved - for example the task below is about expanding and simplifying but also gives students the opportunity to revisit fraction operations. You can download this from TES. Check out Jason's Twitter feed for more of his resources.

4. Normal Distribution
Holly Morgan (@Hollymog) made a Fill in the Gaps activity for standardising normal distribution.  It's great to see these ideas in use at A level.

If you're looking for some really challenging normal distribution questions to test your brightest Year 13s then try searching for 'normal' in the STEP database.

5. New Lesson Resources
In my last gems post I featured some new resources from TES author cparkinson3 (@CP3fxy). He has now shared 12 lessons on shape transformations.

Richard Tock (@TickTockMaths) shared a couple of great lessons for teaching equations of parallel lines and equations of perpendicular lines.

These resources have been added to my resource libraries.

Update
I'm ridiculously lucky to work at a school with a two week October half-term. It's a game changer.

On 12th October I went to #mathsconf21 in Peterborough. As always, it was lovely to catch up with so many maths teachers. Here's me and Sheena (@Sheena2907) in matching maths dresses from Popsy:

I presented on the Calculator Crisis. If you attended that talk then you can download my slides here. Since then I've read this blog post from Andrew Gael (@bkdidact) about calculator use for students with disabilities. It includes an interesting flow chart from ⁦‪@NCTM‬⁩.

At the conference I was lucky enough to watch a demonstration of Bruno Reddy's new website numbots.com which I will definitely be using with my youngest daughter once it's available for families to purchase. I also particularly enjoyed exploring Exploding Dots with Rebecca McAndrew (@MathsMcBec). It was fun to play with binary and polynomial division.

If you missed this conference then don't worry - there's always plenty going on. Check out my events page for maths education conferences in 2019/20.

The Peterborough conference was the day after the Harris Federation October Conference at the ExCeL Centre in London. Here I am with three out of my four maths colleagues from Harris Academy Sutton (yes, we are currently an all-female maths department!):

In the first part of my half-term break I had a lovely chilled out week at home with my daughters. The second week of half-term (when my daughters were back at school) was full on. Craig Barton and I ran two Marvellous Maths courses (one at my school and one in Halifax) and I also spent an afternoon recording two of my Topics in Depth workshops, video-podcast style, at the TES offices in Sheffield.

Marvellous Maths was a lot of fun to run. Thank you to all the 200+ delegates who joined us. I promised I'd share my presentations, which you can download here. A lot of you were asking for a copy of the brilliant AQA quiz - you can download it here and the answers are here.

Thank you to everyone who supported us this week. It was the first time Craig and I had run our own course. We felt it went well so we might do it again next year. Special thanks to AQA, John Catt, White Rose, the MA and Izak9. Primary and prep school teachers should check out Izak9 (@AbacusandHelix) - really interesting classroom resources that I'd never seen before.

Finally, an update on some recent posts and some things that are coming up:

• I blogged about the MA Easter Conference (which I'm really excited about!), reflections from my return to Key Stage 3 teaching, and my dad. 

• It's Maths Week England on 11th - 16th November.  There are a number of competitions that your students can get involved in, listed here. For example MEI are running a Desmos Maths Art competition - students and teachers can win a Desmos T-shirt and a pizza party for their class. 

• Have you visited Don Steward's website recently? He's been posting lots of lovely new tasks. 

• At only £1.99  for many hours of maths entertainment, you'd be crazy not to download MEI's Sumaze! Adventure app. Like the other Sumaze! apps, it's brilliant.

• Cambridge Maths launched a new app called Define It. Every week they publish a mathematical word with several possible definitions for you to rate. They want users to help them find the best definitions.

• I'm very excited about Big MathsJam which takes place four weeks today. It is my favourite event of the year. And not just because the food is so good.

• My book is still in production but I'm hopeful it will be out before Christmas (fingers crossed!). You can order it and read early reviews here. 

5 Maths Gems #110

Welcome to my 110^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. TES Author
When we did the latest round of TES Maths Panel reviews, my fellow panelist Damian Watson discovered the wonderful free resources of TES author cparkinson3. This author's PowerPoints are really well designed - they are slick and professional with neatly animated worked examples plus exercises with solutions.

For example check out the two lessons on volume of prisms - one for Foundation tier and one for Higher tier.

This resource on curve sketching is excellent.

I really like the bar modelling lesson too.

Check out the full collection. I've added them all to my resource libraries.

2. Vectors in Transformations
There's been some updates to BossMaths including changes to their Geogebra applets. The rotations applet now lets you show and hide tracing paper. You can also use vectors as an alternative to using tracing paper. I like this idea - I find using tracing paper a bit unsatisfactory so I will try vectors next time I teach this.

The enlargements applet now lets you show vectors from the centre to a vertex simply by clicking the vertex. This is useful if you use vectors for enlargements (which is particularly helpful for negative enlargements) - I blogged about this here.

3. SATs Support
I know this is a bit late for Year 6 teachers because SATs are next week, but these resources might be helpful to teachers of other year groups, and to Year 6 teachers next year.

Mr Morgs (@_mrmorgs) shared a PowerPoint explaining the language used in the KS2 Maths SATs. This follows on from his detailed analysis of exam language. This is really interesting and comes with lots of advice for teachers. I hope that one day someone does a similarly detailed analysis of the language used in GCSE maths exams.

Greg Chantler (@gregchantler) put all Key Stage 2 SATs arithmetic questions together in a PowerPoint and split them by curriculum year. Each question comes with discussion prompts.

4. Defend Yourself
Amie Albrecht (@nomad_penguin) shared a new idea for an activity. Students are assigned to a representation or method and have to try to explain why it's best. I think this would prompt rich discussion and thinking.

5. Shifting Times Tables
This activity from Miss Konstantine (@GiftedBA) provides a really clear representation of linear sequences as 'shifting times tables'.

Here we can see the four times table (4n) highlighted in the first row, then we see that the times table has been shifted down by one in the second row, meaning the nth term of the sequence is 4n - 1. I love the visualisation here. Check out Miss Konstantine's regularly updated blog for lots of great maths activities and resources.

Update
My blog has been receiving record number of visitors in the last couple of weeks. I guess a lot of people are using my GCSE revision resources page and my recently published post on Foundation revision resources.

I've recently uploaded two sets of revision mats to TES. I made these at work when I realised it's hard to find suitable resources for students who are working at a Grade 1 or 2. Most GCSE resources are inaccessible to them, and this can result in disengagement and sometimes bad behaviour. So I made A3 revision mats that are more accessible, and while I was doing that I made similar resources for other classes. So there are four levels of difficulty. You can download these resources here:

• GCSE Calculator Revision Mats: Higher and Foundation
• GCSE Non-Calculator Revision Mats: Higher and Foundation

I also made some Foundation workouts which are particularly 'print budget friendly'.

GCSE exams are just round the corner now. Don't forget that last year I made breakfast revision resources for all three exams. These can be used either on the morning of the exams or in the lessons leading up to them. 

Last week I published by 5th Annual Gem Awards. Do check it out if you missed it so you can see all the best gems of the year.

Congratulations to Emma McCrea on the publication of her new book 'Making Every Maths Lesson Count'. This is an excellent book for maths teachers.

Here are some other things you might have missed:

• In 2017 I published a post on approaches to answering AQA GCSE ratio questions. It's one of my most popular posts with over 20,000 reads. I've now made a lesson to accompany this post.
• Adam Boxer (@adamboxer1) shared a post on observing expert teaching which includes an 'expert teaching observation form'. I contributed to this post by testing the form out in a maths lesson.
• Richard Tock (@TickTockMaths) published a number of new lessons including some on indices which draw a lot of ideas from my Topics in Depth CPD. Check them out on his blog. 
• One of my Year 11s was flummoxed by rotational symmetry last week so I used the FlashMaths rotational symmetry tool to show him how it works. This has been around for a very long time so I was surprised that a lot of teachers on Twitter hadn't seen it before.

Don't forget that there are a number of events in the summer term that are now open for booking (see my events listings here). I will be presenting at researchED Rugby 2019, the Complete Mathematics Conference, the MEI Conference and the Kent and Medway Secondary Maths Conference. Speaking of events, I also have something a bit different to announce soon - watch this space.

I'll leave you with this video on why zero is the naughtiest and most important number from BBC Ideas.

Why zero is the naughtiest and most important number

via @bbcideas pic.twitter.com/pRJ0M6uEdC

— BBC Teach (@BBC_Teach) 2 May 2019