Some updates this week and tidying up the pages.

Under Resources I have added a new series of pages – Investigations. This came about because I have been looking at a favourite investigation on Palindromes  this week with Year 7 (UK age 11-12) who were thoroughly enjoying themselves and determined to find any two digit palindrome requiring rather more steps with the reverse and add process than most two digit palindromes. I have favourite investigations I use each year, so time to document those, an ongoing project, I will add to the series in the coming weeks.

The UK Maths Challenges have been included on the Problems & Activities page for some time, but note the recent addition of Extended solutions for each of the challenges. (Thank you to my wonderful colleague Anja who pointed this out to me a couple of days ago).

From UKMT, the UK Maths Challenges we have a wonderful library of problems; note the these past papers where you will find questions and full solutions. Check also the Individual Challenges pages where you will find details of the challenge and see sample materials. Check the Junior Challenge for example. Note the addition for 2015 of extended solutions. As well as a full solution which does not use the multiple choice answers further ideas are given for investigation.

Under Problems & Activities we also have Here’s the Diagram …. the idea here is that you show students a diagram and work out what the question might be. It can also work well to show students an algebraic expression for example and ask them what the question might be which I have added to that post. This forces them to use correct vocabulary – expand, factorise and so on as I am convinced there is a whole class of words which students simply translate as ‘do something with this’!
(See Exam Terminology included in this Reference post for students.)

What’s the question?

My Year 7 students has a test recently; in one student’s review she wrote that she got something right in her test because she had got it wrong in a mini-test.I remain convinced that this is a very valuable activity. Details on mini tests can be found in the Revision Activities series of pages; I have also added this information to Mathematics Starters for completeness.

Updating pages I find myself pondering the distinction between Rich Tasks / Rich Questions / Problems …; it seems that the definitions are blurred and there is a great deal of overlap and I have in fact mentioned some resources on more than one page.

I have been giving Problem Solving a great deal of thought recently – more on that in the coming weeks … and I am very much looking forward to seeing those coming to Jo Morgan’s Christmaths 2015