Sep 24 2017

Tidying Up!

Tidy Up I have made several updates to the organisation of this blog recently, always attempting to make things easier to find!

This includes the creation of some new pages.

…

Note the Lesson Planning series which includes pages on Technology also some useful reading. Note the excellent post from Peps Mccrea, The 7 habits of highly effective lesson plans (on the Lesson Planning Reference page). Much food for thought here with the author’s emphasis quite rightly on learning and making the material memorable.

The post includes some rather thoughtful comments on sins of planning!

With Technology in mind I have the Tools & Calculators and Use of Technology pages and also a new series of GeoGebra pages. Note the wealth of resources available from MEI; MEI as a GeoGebra Institute provides us with many excellent classroom resources. The Calculators page includes instructions and examples on various calculators including the new Casio FX991EX-Classwiz.

Shown here we have Quadratic Inequalities from the Higher Tier GCSE collection. This would also be useful for Advanced Level students.

For any teachers teaching the MEI A Level specification MEI have provided GeoGebra files of their large data sets.

MEI Large Data Sets – GeoGebra

For more on Statistics data sets and teaching activities resources from the examination boards please see the Statistics page in the Advanced Level series. Edexcel have very useful guide to teaching Statistics including examples and calculator instructions.

Edexcel Statistics Teaching Guide

Sep 15 2017

Mathematical Songs

Many of these songs have gone down well for a considerable time.

The following songs have all gone down very well with students, particularly the Circle Song!

This on the Quadratic Formula makes my students smile – and they sing along! The One Direction Quadratic Formula song!

(A reminder of GCSE Formulae)

Or perhaps try these!

More favourites:

Circles
- Circles Radius Diameter & Pi Math Learning Upgrade
- Circle Song 2 – Dave Mitchel

Miscellaneous

The Klein Four are a bit beyond school Mathematics but you may appreciate this if you are studying a Mathematics degree!

….and of course, ‘Katie’s bad science’. I love this!
Original and re-edited version of Katie Melua’s song nine million bicycles proposed by Simon Singh and presented on Ted talks by Michael Shermer.

Sep 10 2017

Mathematical Miscellany #16

A resource miscellany this week, a reminder of where to find excellent teaching resources provided by the examination boards and also from MEI.

MEI, AQA, Edexcel and OCR (also Eduqas, part of WJEC) provide excellent support for teachers. With GCSE and A Level subject content now the same for all the examination boards we have an excellent library of resources to use irrespective of the specification chosen for public examinations.

MEI have produced such a valuable collection for teachers with the latest addition to their work on Problem Solving. See their Problem Solving examples and solutions. As well as all the problems and solutions with very valuable suggestions and commentary, MEI have provided a guide to support teachers with the problem solving content of GCSE (14-16) and A Level (16-18).

At A level MEI’s Interactive Scheme of work includes a resource for each section of the course. See also, MEI on integrating technology into your scheme of work which includes many calculator, Desmos and GeoGebra tasks.

See also MEI Free Reources and a page added to the GeoGebra series on the MEI GeoGebra Institute.

AQA

AQA All About Maths – many excellent resources for teachers who offer, or are considering offering AQA maths qualifications. There are many excellent resources including KS3 (11-14) tests, many resources for GCSE and a new section for the new A Level specification where topic tests are being developed for the new course.
AQA Bridging the Gap excellent resources, useful too for ideas to teach KS3.
Teachit Maths (part of the AQA family) though a subscription site offers its entire collection of activities as pdfs free. I have found many high quality resources here for all ages. Look at this activity on quadratic functionsfor example – this should really help understanding.
TeachIt Maths (KS5)
AQA A Level Teaching Resources (note most resources currently on TeachIt Maths)

TeachIt Maths

Edexcel

GCSE Teacher Support includes new content resources, a worksheet collection for Foundation and Higher, teaching low attainers and formulae posters.
Edexcel Worksheets
Teaching and Learning Materials includes an extensive collection from baseline tests for younger (KS3, age 11-14) students to demanding GCSE (age 14-16) Problem Solving questions. The Problem Solving questions with full mark schemes are excellent as are the Practice Papers and topic tests.
Teaching and Learning Materials – A Level 16+ a wonderful and growing collection
Signing up to the wonderful Mathematics Emporium is highly recommended, note that it is a free website intended for the use of teachers of mathematics in secondary schools, regardless of what board you use. Register for an account and ensure you supply a correct centre e-mail address in your name for verification, your centre name and centre number. In the GCE AS/A Level Mathematics cabinet, you will find documents for GCE 2017 including baseline tests and unit tests, also Transition materials for GCSE to A Level. More will be added to these collections.

Edexcel Mathematics Emporium

OCR

GCSE Planning and Teaching documents
GCSE Check In Tests & more

OCR GCSE 9-1 Check in tests
A Level – Check In Tests and more
Bridging the gap between GCSE and AS/A Level Mathematics – A Student Guide.
This is quite simply an outstanding resource for students (and their teachers!). Many exercises are provided and the answers are all at the back. OCR have very helpfully provided the document as a Word document.

Statistics – The large data sets and more for Advanced Level Statistics from AQA, Edexcel, OCR and OCR (MEI) can be found on this page.

Eduqas is part of WJEC and offers Ofqual reformed qualifications to secondary schools and colleges. Eduqas has many very useful secondary and vocational resources for Mathematics. Note the series of resources for topics new to the GCSE specification.

Sep 3 2017

Graspable Math

Reading Jo Morgan’s Gems post led me to the very happy discovery of Graspable Math. Graspable Math offers a highly innovative interface for mathematical notation. You can read the Graspable Math story here.

You can learn a great deal about Graspable Math simply by experimenting, selecting Explore Algebra takes you to the interface which is intuitive; you can also find plenty of help and tutorials on the Learn section of the site, note the Gesture Library as well as the video tutorial collection. There is a YouTube channel here.

Graspable Math is very easy to use, I decided I would solve an equation and wanted to show all the steps. I have used the method of selecting and holding the = sign to start as you can see illustrated in the video above; I was then able to enter an operation to apply to both sides of the equation.

An alternative to the above is to use the settings menu; choose Dragging to apply the inverse operation to both sides.

We can also illustrate a solution graphically by inserting a graph to open a GeoGebra window.

Each expression has a circle at the end – simply drag that to the GeoGebra window. You will sometimes see more than one circle at the end of an expression, select to separate expressions hence showing all steps clearly.

The scrubbing feature is very useful, drag up or down on a number to change its value; the change will propagate through the rest of the working.

Graspable Maths have provided a ‘cheat sheet‘ providing a handy summary of how to use the interface.