It’s December…it’s that time of year again…!
Select Mathematical Advent calendars for a complete collection of Advent Calendars. The collection includes activities for young children through to A Level students (UK age 16-18).
A happy discovery recently on Transum, Linear Programming which provides a really easy way for teachers to illustrate several Linear Programming problems. Students could try these as an online activity.
Transum Mathematics – Linear Programming
I am pleased to see that a reminder of Inequalities is the first activity, something I always start with when teaching Linear Programming. Levels 1 to 5 provide 5 different problems providing very typical linear programming problems and we also have Exam Style Questions. The very generous Free model on Transum allows access to the extensive library of resources including checking answers such as illustrated here; a subscription additionally provides answers to all of the pupil online exercises such as Exam Questions, quizzes and puzzles as well as additional benefits.
Students are required not just to solve these probems but to interpret solutions to such problems; this post on Mathematics for Students looks at using technology to do just that and includes online utilities and instructions on the use of the Excel Solver. Examination questions are used to illustrate the use of these tools.
A version of this post is also available for students on Mathematics for Students. Note the excellent notes and examples on Linear Programming available from CIMT, one of a series of chapters on Discrete Mathematics.
Following on from last week’s post which included some Advanced Level Mathematcs resources, some more this week with updates to some A Level pages.
Edexcel frequently publishes new material, keep an eye on new publications by changing the Sort By filter to ‘Latest’. Published in October 2019 we have a new guide to support for AS and A Level Mathematics. On page 5 there is a really useful list of teacher guides, these are so valuable for teachers and on page 7 another great list – sample, exemplar and past assessment materials; these include model answers – a great teaching resource.
We now have enhanced content guidance which provides further exemplification of specific areas of the subject content.
A new set of mock papers will be published in January 2020 as well as more practice papers focusing on the new elements of content and new question types introduced in the reformed qualification.
Check all the Teaching and Learning materials where you can filter by content type, also Exam Materials and Specification and Sample Assessments which includes the data set for AS and A Level.
The above information is all included on my updated Edexcel page in the A Level series. Also updated is the page with sources of worked examples to include weekly A level starters by topic for Year 12 and 13 from Edexcel past papers/specimen papers with mark schemes from @mathstiger70; these resources are included in the Maths Emporium from Edexcel and also available in a Dropbox folder. There are also Excel tracking sheets that print a QLA sheet for the student every 6 weeks.
Two more pages which have been updated are the Calculator pages on Casio’s ClassWiz and graphical calculators, including the CG50.
Edexcel Calculator Guide
From Pearson-Edexcel, one of their excellent guides from the Teaching and Learning Materials collection, we have this guide to using calculators when teaching AS and A level Mathematics. This very clear 5 page document lists specification content for AS and A Level Mathematics and provides video tutorials for a Scientific Calculator (Casio ClassWiz) and a Graphics Calculator (Casio CG50). It includes tutorials on both calculators – ideal for students learning to use these calculators.
A Level Maths and Further Maths Resources
Jack Brown has over 990 teaching videos for the A Level Mathematics specification on his TLMaths site. There are now more videos for the core content for Further Maths, to date, videos for Proof and Matrices are available. These are included on this page for Further Maths teaching resources.
Desmos New Features
Keep an eye on new features from Desmos, we now have for example, Spearman’s rank coefficient. The data in this example comes from the exam paper, MEI S2 January 2006, question 3. Remember that Desmos has many useful and easy to use Statistical functions.
For resources using technology for A Level Maths and Further Maths, MEI’s series of tasks are excellent; all the student tasks, whether for Autograph, Casio, Desmos, GeoGebra, or TI-Nspire are structured in the same way, beginning with instructions on the use of the technology, also given are questions, a problem and further tasks. Integrating Technology Into Your Scheme of Work suggests activities aligned to the specification.
Note we now have a recently added collection of Autograph Tasks, currently for A Level Mathematics. Remember that Autograph is now free, these tasks are helpful for teachers wishing to learn more about Autograph in that clear instructions are given on how to construct the objects in Autograph.
November 5th – Bonfire Night
OCR Puzzle
Last week I mentioned Halloween resources from Perton Maths Department and OCR Maths, this week we have Bonfire Night. Check the Perton Maths bar model bonfire challenges and from OCR, check their latest Maths Puzzles including a challenging number grid for Bonfire Night.
Maths Week England – 11th-16th November 2019
Maths Week England aims to “Raise the profile of Mathematics throughout England, you can see the full aims here. Note the various competitions running including a Secondary and Post 16 quiz featuring questions for every age group from Y7 to Y13 and also the resources available. MangaHigh, Sumdog and TimeTables Rockstars are running competitions using their software for all schools whether or not they subscribe and we also have MEI’s Ritangle competition and Desmos Art Competition. All the details are on the Maths Week England competition page.