5 Maths Gems #187

Welcome to my 187^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Calculator Skills
I love the website gcsemathsquestions.co.uk, which I first featured back in Gems 155. It has PowerPoints of GCSE questions from three exam boards, sorted by topic. I find this really helpful. A new addition to this website is a calculator resource. It features GCSE questions that allow students to practise each calculator skill, including prime factorisation, ratio and mean from a table, and QR codes so students can see video explanations of how to answer each question using calculator functions. I plan to use this resource in a revision lesson with Year 11 in a couple of weeks. 

2. AI Updates

I've blogged about using AI in maths teaching a couple of times before: 

• in AI Maths Resources I wrote about the resources on aimaths.weebly.com which were created by @DGRAIMaths using AI
• in my post Digitising Old Textbook Exercises I wrote about how I used AI tools to instantly turn exercises from old textbooks into high quality electronic documents.  

I thought it might be useful to use my gems posts to occasionally update readers about AI related developments in the world of maths education.

• @MattTheApp has created an AI maths chatbot called the Eden Project - check out this tweet to see the kind of thing he's doing with it. 
• Lots of schools are experiencing problems with students using AI to cheat on Sparx and other homework platforms - you can normally tell by the speed at which they complete their homework. There's a thread about this here. 
• @hartmaths tried using AI to help create a gap fill activity on volume. This is what it came up with:

3. A Level Statistics
@mrwhatleymaths.bsky.social‬ has generously shared his work on A Level Statistics. There are very few resources available for this qualification so this will be incredibly helpful for any school that runs, or is considering running, A Level Statistics. There's some crossover with other qualifications too.  Oliver's resources and scheme of work can be downloaded here. 

4. Vocabulary
@melissamaths's team have had a big focus on mathematical literacy and Tier 3 vocabulary this year and have created a bank of key words and command words across all three Key Stages. The words have student friendly definitions, alongside an image of the 'word in action'. You can download this word bank here.

5. Don's Patterns

‪@catrionaagg.bsky.social‬ posted about one of Don Steward’s tasks which has a pattern in the answers. This makes it easy to check, and students quickly spot the pattern so they can self-correct as they go, plus there's an instant extension activity in trying to write the next question. The task is for solving equations with an unknown on both sides:

This reminds me of one of my favourite Don Steward tasks - 'Expanding and Simplifying' - this also has a pleasing pattern in the answers:

It's a great idea to set a challenge task along the lines of  'find another expression that fits the pattern'.

Conference

It's only two weeks until #mathsconf37 in Sheffield. It's not too late to book tickets. There's a great lineup of workshops and I really encourage maths teachers to attend if they've never been to one of these conferences before. It's always a great day out.

I'll leave you with this... Thanks to ‪@emmathe37th.bsky.social for sharing The Polygon Song from Mr Walker on YouTube. This made me laugh!

5 Maths Gems #185

Welcome to my 185^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Admissions Tests and A Level Resources 

Every year in the Spring Term ‪@ecrmaths runs a series of information sessions for her Year 12 students on the main STEM admissions tests (TMUA, MAT, STEP, PAT and ESAT). She has shared her slides for her 2025 sessions. This is incredibly generous and helpful of Emily - I need to run similar sessions myself but had nothing prepared. Her resources are excellent so this will save me a lot of time and really benefit my students. 

Speaking of A level, did you see the recent new resources on Edexcel Emporium? They have shared A Level Maths Exam-Style Topic Tests for Statistics and Mechanics.  These questions are new and have been reviewed by the examining team - they are not just collections of old questions. They have also published a set of Mock Papers for AS Further Maths - this was very much needed. 

2. Constructions Booklet

Thank you to Tom Riley for sharing his workbook for constructions and loci. 

Tom has also provided some words of wisdom on teaching this topic (see his Bluesky thread for more detail):

1. Start with lots of practice of just drawing circles with compasses.
2. Go into lots of depth on each construction before moving on so that students become familiar with the language early (e.g. shading, showing points, use of scales).
3. Interleave where possible (e.g in the booklet you see circles then perpendicular bisectors then circles with perpendicular bisectors).
4. Include tasks where students have to identify which construction to use (extract below).
5. Use a visualiser.

3. Literacy and Oracy

Oracy is a big focus for a lot of schools at the moment. At my school we have done loads of CPD on it for the last three years (!) but it continues to be something we need to develop across the school. 

‪MrLevMaths‬ helpfully shared a slide from discussions he'd had in department CPD about the link between student oracy, mathematical communication and understanding. How do you ensure students know which expression you mean when you are explaining? How do you explicitly teach them to talk about their maths?

 

Teachers all say these things differently. For C above, would you say the words "lots of" "multiply" "all over"? This is a really interesting thing to cover in department CPD. 

You might be interested in the 'Maths Pronunciation Project' video I made a few years ago. Even the way we say x⁴ differs between teachers.

4. Transum

I spotted a tweet from @Transum about their interactive circles parts vocabulary tool. It might help students appreciate the number of different shapes a sector can have, and prompt questions about major/minor and whether a segment can be a semicircle. 

Transum is full of lovely tasks and tools. For example check out Tim Honeywill's Indices Challenge. 

Transum has also added three more panels to their popular Refreshing Revision tool which can be customised by the teacher.

5. Congruency

@hartmaths shared some congruency questions that he used with his Year 11s. There's lots of interweaving here - these questions feature angles in parallel lines, properties of shapes and circle theorems.

Update

La Salle have said on Twitter that Mathsconf37 will be on 15th March in Sheffield. Tickets are not yet on sale but apparently they will be soon. I've prepared a workshop for this conference called 'Fun with Factorising' which I am very excited about. If you enjoy algebra, come along!

I have a vacancy at my lovely school - we're looking for a maths teacher to join us in September. We're a mixed comprehensive school in South London/Surrey. We have great behaviour and attitudes, happy students and excellent maths results (our first two maths P8s were 1.26 and 1.22. 50% of our students got a Grade 7+ at GCSE last year, and 94% got 4+). My team are friendly and brilliant and it's a real pleasure to work with them. We are particularly in need of someone who can teach mechanics at A level, and we can offer a timetable that is majority A level teaching if desired. But if you're considering applying and you're not an A level teacher, please do go ahead and apply as we can be flexible on this. The closing date is Monday 27th January so apply quickly, or get in touch this weekend if you have questions. We will interview over the next couple of weeks. More information here. 

Finally, don't forget to check out Dr Austin's new resources - they cover circles, ratio, averages and mechanics. I particularly like her Area and Perimeter of Sectors with Pythagoras Practice Grid.

#5 Maths Gems 182

Welcome to my 182^nd gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1.Bad Graphs

It's fun (and important) to share examples of misleading graphs with students. @ticktockmaths has shared a gallery of bad graphs which will be very helpful. I love the example below: at first glance it seems very clear and the scale seems fine, but when you think about what it's trying to show you realise how misleading it is.

Do check out the rest of ticktockmaths.co.uk - the lessons on there are really nice. Recent additions include one on Mixed Numbers and Improper Fractions and one on Writing Expressions. 

2. Algebraic Fractions

@japleen_kaur1 shared these lovely algebraic fractions questions made by her colleague.

Answers are here. Thank you for sharing these Japleen! I love the creativity. 

3. Fractions Vocabulary

@Scott_Math83 shared three simple questions which highlight the challenges students face when working with fractions and percentages. A subtle change in wording totally changes each question. 

4. Multiples

I love tasks which encourage deeper thinking about factors, multiples and primes. Thank you to @studymaths for sharing this:

Check out @studymaths' feed for lots more excellent tasks.

5. Dr Austin

@draustinmaths continues to share great new A level resources for both pure maths and mechanics. Recent examples include a task on set notation and one on graphical inequalities and regions. Thanks Amanda!

Update
On Friday I was at the Harris October Conference with my lovely colleagues. 

If you want to join my brilliant team, we have a vacancy for a January start. Contact me if you want to chat about the role - but note that the closing date for applications is Monday 14th October so you will have to act quickly!

After a quick stop at post-conference drinks in London, I got the train up to Sheffield for pre-#mathsconf36 drinks. Two sets of drinks on the same day in two different cities was a bit much for me - I'm too old for this and I was beyond exhausted!

 

On Saturday I attended #mathsconf36 which was excellent. It was the best conference I have been to in a long time, and it has rekindled my love for mathsconfs! I went to fantastic workshops led by Rob Eastaway, Sam Blatherwick and Craig Latimir. I really enjoyed these workshops. I ran a session myself called 'Every Mark Matters' where I shared examples of where students lose marks at GCSE. The idea is that we show these examples to our students to help them better understand what's expected. If you attended the conference, my slides will be emailed out next week by the team at Complete Mathematics.

If you've not been to a mathsconf in a while, or you've never been before, then I strongly encourage you to attend the next one. It will be in March - date and venue tbc.

Finally, this week I did the classic paper folding integration activity with my Year 13 class. The idea came from @sxpmaths many years ago and it's always my favourite A level lesson of the year!

5 Maths Gems #177

Welcome to my 177^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. MathsLinks

I discovered the website MathsLinks through TES. It's run by maths teacher Kenneth Stafford. He has collated lots of resources in one place. For example, on his GCSE Questions by Topics page he has included links to websites such as Corbett Maths and Maths Genie for every topic.

He has produced numerous other resources including Grade 1 GCSE Maths Questions where he has combined the first two pages of Foundation GCSE maths papers, and a set of questions on Reverse Mean. 

Check out Kenneth's TES page and website for more.

2. Oak National Academy
It's good to see the collection of maths resources at Oak National Academy has grown since I last blogged about them in Gems 175. Here are a few extracts.

From Problem solving with factors, multiples, squares and cubes

From Angles on parallel lines traversed by a straight line

From Problem solving with polygons

3. OAT Maths

Thanks to @jemmaths for sharing some new algebra units published by OAT Maths: The Cartesian Grid, Introduction to Sequences and Linear Inequalities. Check out the carefully sequenced slides and booklets.

4. Etymology Update

One of my favourite resources of all time is @boss_maths' amazing vocabulary resource. It aims to relate mathematical terms to key words from other subjects that share the same etymology. It has recently had an update.

5. Tasks

Here are a few nice resources I've spotted on Twitter recently.

A prime puzzle from Sarah Farrell, suitable for Key Stage 2 or 3:

A task on solving quadratics by factorisation from @DrStoneMaths:

An area task from @brynspiration in which students have to find the area of the polygons, where no perpendicular lengths have been given:

@ChrisMcGrane84 shared a really nice logs task:

Update

I've not posted much on my blog recently but I've very been busy in the background. Thanks to maths teacher Alastair Mundy, who kindly offered to help out and has been an absolute legend, I've finally got my Key Stage 3/4 resource libraries in order. I've fixed broken links and added some new resources - everything is now in much better shape. I still have work to do: my next step is to fix my A level pages.

I also published a post on GCSE revision resources and one on A level resources. 

The start of 2024 saw a very well-deserved MBE for my brilliant friend Chris Smith (congratulations Chris!).

I'm looking forward to conference season. I will be at #mathsconf34 in Yate (near Bristol) on 16th March presenting on 'Ten Strategies for Good GCSE Results'.

Over the Easter holidays I'll be at the Joint Conference of the Mathematics Subject Associations in Stratford-Upon-Avon. I'm running a nice long session in Pythagoras so we'll have time to get stuck into some fun maths.

I have a couple of vacancies on my team, so if you're looking for a change of school in September then do come and join us. We're based in South London. Here's my fabulous team at the Christmas party:

One of our two vacancies is for a mechanics teacher. We currently have a thriving Year 12 cohort (we are by far the most popular subject in the school, with three A Level Maths classes and one A Level Further Maths class). Most of the A level teaching is done by me (statistics specialist) and my colleague (mechanics specialist). Sadly my colleague is relocating in September so I need to replace her, preferably with an experienced A level teacher. For the right candidate we'll be able offer a timetable where the vast majority of classes are A level (Year 12 and 13 Maths and Further Maths). The Year 13 Further Maths module they'll be teaching is Further Pure 1. I think this is a really appealing job - my school is lovely, and teaching A level is a delight. If you have any questions about the role, or you want to visit prior to interview, feel free to contact me (resourceaholic@gmail.com). The closing date for applications is 26th February 2024.

I'll leave you with these lovely magic squares from Chris Smith. Did you know that Don Steward had an entire blog of magic square activities? Check it out at medianmagicsquares.blogspot.com.