I do like marking activities such as the one illustrated here and have used many such resources successfully. This is one of Susan Wall’s resources; her excellent resources can be found in this Active A Level Mathematics collection on STEM Learning. ‘Marking’ is one of the many hand-picked resources by topic for Advanced Level. To quote STEM Learning “Each resource has been hand-picked to cover key subject content in Pure, Mechanics and Statistics, as well as meet the overarching themes of mathematical argument, language, proof, problem-solving and modelling.”

STEM Learning also has a collection of hand-picked resources for KS3 and KS4 (age 11-16); the resources cover all the statements in the Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 programmes of study. The collection is a treasure trove of resources, indexed really usefully. I see many favourites in the collection such as the wonderful Standards Unit Resources.

I am looking at Order of Operations with my Year 7 students currently and noted N5 from the Standards Unit in the STEM Order of Operations collection; I do like the area representations for the numerical expressions here.

The collection for Order of Operations includes the CIMT resources on the topic, I have used CIMT resources throughout my teaching career. Remember CIMT has much more than just the text chapters; as the STEM Centre commentary points out we also have for example the additional activities. Having used Transum’s Broken calculator starter successfully last week, I agree with the STEM Centre highlighting CIMT’s Calculator Keys Activity ( 4.4), an excellent task with extension questions included.

Magic Fractions is a good recommendation, I like the way this problem involves listing ordered pairs from a set of three numbers – a handy reminder of Systematic Listing Strategies.

Looking at an Algebra topic list I checked Transformation of Graphs, I like that recording sheet for students to use; they can explore functions and transformations using graphing software and sketch the graphs on the grid provided. Note the link to some other resources to extend GCSE students and a reminder of the wonderful Durham Maths Mystery.

A final thought this week – with year 7, as well as looking at order of operations we have been studying Directed Numbers; our discussion reminded me of Boris Johnson’s 2004 statement, made during the BBC’s light-hearted news quiz show Have I Got News for You, “I could not fail to disagree with you less.” I left Year 7 to ponder that over the weekend! I recall hearing it on the radio whilst driving to school and correctly predicting it would turn up in a D2 logic questions on an MEI A Level Further Maths paper!