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 #192

Welcome to my 192^nd gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Hannah Kettle

Hannah Kettle is making worksheets and accompanying videos to review each unit of the GCSE Maths course. Unit 1 Higher (Number) is now on her website with the accompanying worksheet. Hannah has a great idea - these videos and resources would be brilliant for Year 10 or 11 cover lessons. Students make notes and review the first page while watching the video, before having a go at the second side on their own.

2. Durham Murder Mysteries

‪Hannah (‪@missradders) tweeted about how much her Year 8s loved the Durham Maths Mystery she used in an algebra lesson. 

This inspired @mrs-p-maths to post about using a Straight Line Graphs Maths Mystery with Year 10.

It's been a very long time since I've blogged about these resources and I suspect that a lot of new teachers won't have seen them before. If you like these check out Gems 96 where I shared some similar activities produced by Richard Perring.

3. MathsPad

MathsPad have shared some excellent new resources in their September Update including new chapters in their curriculum booklets. 

There's also new Arrange the Digits slides and worksheet and Proportion Tables slides and worksheet.

4. AS Level Tasks

Dr Austin shared some fantastic new AS level tasks at the end of the summer holidays. Check out her website draustinmaths.com for the full collection. 

Through the #mathstoday hashtag on Bluesky (this is where maths teachers post daily highlights from their lessons) I've seen a number of other fantastic Year 12 tasks this week.

From Catriona (@catrionaagg), an algebra task where students are pushed to articulate their reasoning...

... and a lovely lesson on graph sketching.

@MrLevMaths shared a really interesting task on intersections, thinking about sketching and the discriminant. 

Karen (@karenshancock) shared an index laws and algebra task with a good level of challenge.

Nathan (@nathanday) shared a lovely task on graph intersections and solving simultaneous equations.

Nathan also shared some Susan Wall tasks. When I first qualified as a teacher I went on a course on how to teach A level Maths and that's where I was introduced to Susan Wall's brilliant tasks - I'm a big fan. Here are some examples shared by Nathan:

I also spotted that Nathan has shared a helpful Edexcel grade boundaries tool for A level Maths and Further Maths where you can very easily see grade boundaries by module. 

5. AS Level Statistics

I'm delighted to see the recent additions to the A level resources at 1stclassmaths.com/alevelrevision. These are brilliant and incredibly helpful. I've added the links to my A level library. 

Update

I'm looking forward to seeing lots of you at #mathsconf39 in London next month. I'll be presenting on Don Steward's wonderful resources, and I'll be out for post-conference drinks on Saturday night.

It's great to hear that MathsWorld is opening a discovery centre in London - I was totally unaware this was happening until my mum sent me an article about it! I can't see anything on their website or on social media about this. Assuming the article is correct, this might be a future school trip destination for schools in and around London.

I'm so used to getting my maths news from social media, it surprises me when I see it elsewhere. Last week I also spotted an article about an Ada Lovelace statue being erected in Leicestershire. I'm a big fan of Ada Lovelace and will no doubt visit this statue one day when I'm in the area. It can be added to the list of mathematical stuff to visit in the UK, along with Turing's statue in Manchester, Ramanujan's plaque in Putney, the beautiful Penrose tiles outside the Andrew Wiles building in Oxford, Newton's house in Grantham...  as I write this list I realise that there are a great many mathematical things to see - perhaps there's another blog post in this.

Finally, thank you to Hannah @neechmaths for posting something on Bluesky that made me laugh out loud... These are genuine Casio fx991CW calculator reviews on Amazon.

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.