Daisy Christodoulou on Life After Levels – conclusion

Daisy Christodoulou on Multiple Choice Questions

From researchEd 2015 and highly recommended, Daisy Christodoulou discussed the removal of National Curriculum Levels. Read Daisy’s post and see her slides on her blog you can also watch the presentation.

In that presentation, Daisy discussed the use of Multiple Choice Questions, something I have always liked using in my teaching. Daisy’s discussion of making questions harder by changing the number of correct answers reminded me of the, in my opinion excellent, Multiple Choice A Level papers which the then London board included in their A Level Mathematics examinations (London Syllabus B) (see an example below).

In the meantime, happily we do have access to some Multiple Choice questions online and I thought it would be useful to bring them together in one place.

Diagnostic Questions

I have written several posts on the excellent Diagnostic Questions site which hosts thousands of multiple choice questions written by teachers designed to address student misconceptions. I have found it worthwhile to discuss the wrong answers with students so we are all aware of the kinds of mistakes it is easy to make. It is a site I use regularly, teaching Year 10 about the equation of a tangent to a circle at a given point for example, I created a Desmos page and a Diagnostic Questions Quiz using questions on circles (centre the origin) from Diagnostic Questions.
(pdf: quation of a Circle & Gradient of Tangent).

Note the various collections on the site.

Some Advanced Level Pure topics are also covered on Diagnostic Questions; see for example this quiz I created on  Logarithms and Exponentials.

Phil Bruce – Multiple Choice Starter Questions

On TES resources, author pbrucemaths has a brilliant collection of clearly indexed multiple choice starter questions, Phil Bruce has aimed to cover every objective on the GCSE syllabus.

Colin Billet – GCSE Multiple Choice Questions

Also on TES, Colin Billet has created multiple choice questions from old GCSE papers, one set is for the higher tier and another for foundation.

Mega Maths Quiz from Ben Cooper

For a superb collection of Multiple Choice questions, great for starters, plenaries or any time, head for Ben Cooper’s resources; see for example Mega Revision from Ben Cooper and 30 Number Starters. Resources by Ben can also be found on TES.

Don Steward – Rearrangement Steps

Don Steward has so many outstanding resources on his Median blog, including multiple choice quizzes, see this on rearrangement for example. Note that he also has a separate blog for GCSE practice resources. many of these quizzes are multiple choice.

From UKMT, the UK Maths Challenges provide a wonderful library of multiple choice problems; note the 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.

American Mathematics Competitions

Another brilliant set of multiple choice questions comes from another Mathematics Challenge, the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC). There are several competitions which increase in difficulty by student age. Problems and solutions are available. I do like this problem, a good one to use when teaching Systematic Listing Strategies perhaps.

Mathisfun has an extensive library of very clear diagrams and explanations and also multiple choice questions for most topics. Use the Index to find the topic you want and note that for most topics you will see some questions at the end.

mathisfun – Simplifying Square Roots – select image

As you can see from the Index all ages are catered for including older students; I have used the clear explanations and questions on finding the inverse of a 3×3 matrix with Further Mathematicians for example. Once you have selected an answer a complete solution is provided. Note the Question Database – some exploring to do I think!

The Who Wants To Be A Millionaire format can provide a fun way to present Multiple Choice quizzes. A Google search returns various resources and of course, provides you with PowerPoint Millionnaire templates you can adapt for your own use. Some highlights from that search, the Primary Resources files use a simple and clear format and William Enemy has described a resource on Great Maths Teaching Ideas which also uses that template; such a good idea to have all students answer all questions and add up their winnings! Another example – Algebra on TES.

For older students the old London A Level Multiple Choice papers could be very useful, I have scanned one of my old collection and will add more.

Oxford Maths Admissions Test

For an extensive collection of Challenging questions for Advanced Level students, we can turn to the Oxford Maths Admissions Test, note the menu on the right-hand side of the page, many papers and also solutions are available. I can never resist a quick graph on Desmos but note the very comprehensive solutions provided. For more Oxford MAT questions see this extensive collection on Underground Mathematics. These Underground Mathematics resources will provide so much more than the question in each case. Note the suggestions and solutions.

There are various options for creating your own multiple choice questions. That Quiz is simple but effective – all free and no adverts. There are many quizzes already available on a variety of topics, it is also possible to create your own quizzes. Teachers can register and add classes if they wish. You can search the many quizzes available, searching for Fractions, for example, led me to this quiz.

Testmoz

For an alternative way to set up a simple quiz try Testmoz. No registration is required. This has been written by Matt Johnson, an undergraduate student – the instructions are all very clear and you can check out the FAQ!  (I love those FAQ! For example: I lost my quiz URL can you retrieve it for me? Answer: No). Try this test on Directed Numbers – log in as a student, the passcode is cy090610

More to Explore!

In Daisy’s talk mentioned at the beginning of this post she mentioned British Columbia questions in her discussion of multiple choice questions, a quick search led me to this Pre-Calculus paper for example...