On his outstanding website full of very high quality resources, drfrostmaths.com, Jamie Frost has now launched his new Homework Site.
Completely free this does a lot! Practise questions on National Curriculum and enrichment topics, choosing questions by topic and by diffculty, perhaps choose UKMT Maths Challenge questions as these are in the extensive database too. Students can practise independently and earn points and trophies. Teachers can set and monitor work using the powerful Data Analytic Feature. I will certainly be trying this with my students and easily uploaded my Year 9 class which took moments.
Something I alway do is add myself to my classes so I can get the student view, Colleen Student is a very busy student – she’s in a lot of classes! Jamie Frost has this as an easy feature already provided; you can be Demo McDemoFace (love the name!) in any class.
So here’s Demo McDemoFace practising her Algebra!
What a sophisticated way to choose questions, not just the subject but the difficulty as well and additional skills to include or exclude.
So I can confirm that it is very easy to use as a student, Demo McDemoFace did a bit of Algebra and earned a trophy!
The interface for entering solutions is intuitive and very easy to use,
Explore this site and sign up your students. Thank you Dr Frost from teachers everywhere! This looks superb. More to follow on this.
MEI have published this video (18 minutes) to introduce features of the new MEI AS/A level Maths specs, explaining the decisions made and how they support good teaching, learning and assessment. MEI’s YouTube Channel includes this and other helpful videos. This is helpful in its discussion of the new requirements for Statistics
On the subject of new A Level Specifications I am working on the series of pages on A Level Reform. There have been several updates recently, a work in progress, there is much to do here and I am very much looking forward to working with the new specification. Using for example Desmos is something I do all the time anyway so I am delighted that the new specifications require the Use of Technology. Quite right too to assess the Use of Data in Statistics and the use of large data sets. MEI discuss their use of Data in the video above.
For schools who use AQA’s excellent Level 2 Further Mathematics Qualification, news from AQA states that this qualification has been extended and will be available for all students in 2019. AQA’s intention is “to redevelop it for first assessment in 2020 to ensure that it still fulfils its stated purpose of filling the gap between GCSE Maths and further studies in Maths at Level 3.”
My Year 11s this year have been studying both AQA’s GCSE 9-1 course and the Level 2 Further Maths; these have made a wonderful complementary pair. Many of the Further Mathematics questions have provided additional practice for the standard GCSE course. The extension will allow us some breathing space to keep working on the new GCSE course and take on the new A level specifications.
And finally…
This has been doing the rounds recently and illustrates beautifully that caution is required in our statistical analysis! Be a little wary of summary statistics! From AUTODESK Research, “Same Stats, Different Graphs… 