Category Mathematical Miscellany

A compilation of mathematical goodies!

Jan 15 2022

Mathematical Miscellany #63

On Transum Mathematics, we now have Equatero which John Tranter created having seen the TV game show, Lingo.

Transum Mathematics

The rules are simple – find the calculation – any numbers or symbols in the correct place are shown as green, any numbers or symbols that are correct but in the wrong place will be yellow and any numbers or symbols that are not included in the calculation will be  red. Rather an addictive game – but plenty of thinking! This has been added to the Number collection in the Puzzles & Games series.

We also have a Maths words version – Vocabero.

MathsBot – Bar Modelling Tutorial

It’s great to see Jonathan Hall adding manuals for his great resources on MathsBot. Here is Bar Modelling for example.

See post on Bar Modelling for problem examples and resources.

Thinking Blocks – Math Playground

It’s really helpful when sites have a clear ‘What’s new?’ type section or you can easily search by recent additions and/or subscribe to a newsletter. Just a few examples from the many excellent sites for Mathematics:

On Transum see Breaking News where you will find information on new and updated resources. Current news includes the resources mentioned above, Equatero and Vocabero.

From NCETM, see News and Features.

Nrich – sign up for their Newsletter.

What’s new at Desmos? This is really comprehensive – a great way to keep up to date.

On Dr Austin Maths select New from the Menu, I see some more of her always high quality resources – I’m a fan of Fill in the Blanks (as well as all her other resources!) For a whole collection of Fill in the Blanks type resources from various sources, see this post.

MathsBot was mentioned earlier, keep up with Jonathan Hall’s latest MathsBot resources.

Jonathan Hall – MathsBot

An absolute favourite resource Author – Andy Lutwyche, search his resources by newest on TES. I see some brilliant new Erica’s Errors on Mechanics.

Andy Lutwyche – Erica’s Errors series

On Purposeful Maths from Phil Bruce and Martin Green, see What’s New; we see for example added in December, Adding Negative Numbers.

Purposeful Maths

Starting Points Maths is arranged by date, most recent first, you can also look at Latest Tasks by topic area.

Starting Points Maths

The task continues with further questions and students draw a graph; I really like the way students see the multiple representations here.

From MEI – on Integrating technology into your scheme of work, we see published in December, GeoGebra resources for Further Maths A level.

MEI GeoGebra Tasks
Dec 5 2021

Mathematical Miscellany #62

Featuring…

  • Christmas resources
  • Advent Updates
  • From Advent…to Appvent
  • Updates including the brilliant Interwoven Maths from Nathan Day, Bingo retrieval activities from Dan Rodriguez-Clark and pages from MEI on the Use of Technology from Primary to KS5.
Teachit Maths

Included in the collection of Christmas Resources from Teachit Maths we have The twelve days of Christmas budget, twelve challenges for students to practise percentages. The resource mentions The PNC Christmas Price Index, an annual tradition from PNC Bank which shows the current cost for one set of each of the gifts given in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” For craft lovers note the Christmas Crafts with full instructions on how to make the12 gifts from the Christmas Price Index.

For A level students, how about some Christmas Mechanics?! This resource is a collection of six legacy M1 past paper questions covering some of the Edexcel M1 syllabus with a Christmas theme. The questions are taken from 2004 exam papers.

From the brilliant Mathigon site, see Puzzles 2021, and perhaps have a look back at their puzzles from earlier years. Mathigon releases a puzzle at 9 am GMT every day in December; solutions are available on the following day.

Mathigon Puzzles 2021

In my post earlier this week, Advent – Opening the Christmath doors, I mentioned that some of these Advent calendar resources, provide useful for end of term Christmas activities for examination classes. In this category we have for example:

JCalderwood revision
J Calderwood – Advent Calendars

J Calderwood has provided three Advent Calendars – Advanced Higher, HIgher and N5 Maths for Scottish Students. A great revision resource that could be adapted for different courses.

Access Maths Christmas Revision

Alternatively how about a Christmas Revision Calendar from Access Maths? Scroll right down this collection of very helpful GCSE Revision Resources for two Christmas Calendars, one for Foundation and one for Higher.

Staying with Advent, for some great apps, switch to an Appvent Calendar from Mark Anderson, follow #AppventCalendar to see each day’s app.

Updates – December 2021

An amazing new set of resources to explore from Nathan Day, Interwoven Maths, you can read Nathan’s description, What is Interweaving.

Added to Bingo resources, try these Bingo retrieval activities from Dan Rodriguez-Clark. This generator has several settings giving you a choice of topics, including some for Post 16, the number of questions and your chosen display settings.

Added to Use of Technology, for excellent advice and resources see these MEI pages:

Nov 27 2021

Mathematical Miscellany #61

Featuring…

From Matt Woodfine on Maths White Board revision cards and online tests are now available.

Looking at the latest newsletter from Chris Smith, (highly recommended), I see he mentions Stella’s Stunners, this is an excellent site, I featured it in my post on Proof, it has so many excellent resources.

Stella’s Stunners

Stella’s Stunners is a library of more than 700 Non-Routine Mathematics Problems for Middle and High School Students; these problems certainly encourage mathematical thinking. You can filter the problems to narrow your search and usefully create a pdf document of your chosen problems. Perhaps try Symbol Pushing or Logic. Try the Introductory Problem Set which consists of twenty problems designed to show you how to use the problem library. A comprehensive user guide is available.

I’ll be keeping my Advent and Christmas pages updated – here’s another to add from STEM Learning.

If you have just a few minutes, then why not try a Maths in a minute article from Plus Magazine. A recent article by Kate Stansfield is on Maths and music. If this is a subject that interests you and you have more minutes, you can find a whole collection of articles exploring Maths and Music. The article in the Maths in a minute series includes a discussion on why some pairs of notes sound “nice” to us.

We could hear some different intervals on WolframAlpha which will also give you the pitch difference between the two notes.

Additional information includes the frequencies of each note, you can also find related musical queries. I spent rather longer than a minute on this, particularly having discovered other Music examples on WolframAlpha! You can get information on songs and artists, audio waveforms, and musical instruments as well as Music Theory.

Maths in a minute reminded me of The Mathematical Moments site which features many downloadable pdfs, posters that show the role that Mathematics plays in Science, Technology and Human Culture. A short or more detailed version of each poster is available and a search is provided. This is included in my post on Posters.

Mathematical Moments - Sticking the Landing

Continuing with the theme of Maths in minutes, From Pearson Qualifications, try Tea Break Training, these short videos which offer targeted professional development training on teaching strategies, content areas and support for GCSE Maths.

If you are preparing students for STEP examinations, have a look at this webinar from Nrich which In this webinar Claire explains how STEP questions can be used to help students prepare for a University Maths degree and demonstrates the resources available on the STEP Support Programme. (maths.org/step). This has been added to the University Admissions Tests page which includes many resources for students aiming at high A level grades.

Nov 14 2021

Mathematical Miscellany #60

Featuring…

Andy Lutwyche – Lazy Lionel series

In my Fill in the blanks post, I featured many excellent resources where students must completely partly worked examples including several from a favourite resource author, Andy Lutwyche. I mentioned some of Andy’s latest resources include his Lazy Lionel resources, Lionel does not show his working, so loses marks! Andy has added further to this collection. We also have Hasty Hazel and Methodical Mabel, these are so good and I’m sure can promote excellent conversations in the classroom on misconceptions and showing sufficient working.

See also Compare & Discuss/Multiple Strategies

White Rose Year 11 end of term assessments

From White Rose Maths, Year 11 end of term assessments for autumn are now available free from their secondary assessments page, scroll down for Autumn Foundation and Higher resources. Mark schemes are also provided.

Staying with White Rose Maths …

White Rose Maths – Barvember 2021

It’s still November, so remember Barvember, from White Rose Maths, which was created to encourage the use of the bar model. Now you can solve the problems using another great digital tool from White Rose Maths, Bar Model. White Rose Maths completed the solution to their day 10 challenge on the Bar Model tool:

Bar models can really help children visualise and then solve maths problems. See Bar Modelling.

NCETM Secondary Mastery Professional Development Materials – Operating on number

NCETM have published KS3 subject knowledge audits; there are 17 audit documents with each one based on one of the core concepts from the NCETM Secondary Mastery Professional Development Materials. For each document, following audit questions with check boxes you can select to show how confident you are, you will find exemplifications and explanations, and further support links. There is space at the end of each document where you can reflect on the material. Further KS3 teaching resources can be found on the 17 core concept webpages.

WolframAlpha

Discussing increasing and decreasing functions with my A level students recently I made the happy discovery that WolframAlpha provides a clear visual representation for such a query, as well as returning the values of x for which the function is increasing and decreasing; we also have the first derivative and critical points.

Since last week’s post on Literacy Skills in Mathematics, I have added resources to that collection. In my post on Proof, I began with the importance of spoken language. Spoken language is so important in students’ development, the KS3 Programme of Study quite rightly stresses the importance of spoken and written language. Both spoken and written language and notation are key. This applies to all key stages from definitions and examples and non-examples at key stage 3 to proof by contradiction – writing negations of statements at KS5. For many students, if their ability to write mathematics clearly and succinctly is poor this may well be a result of their not speaking about mathematics clearly. Conversations in class where students explain their thinking are so valuable.

Resources, where students practice writing expressions from algebraic statements and vice versa, are now included in the literacy post.

  • Activities to help learn reasoning and proof

Also added are further Transum Mathematics resources as you can find a whole collection of Vocabulary activities on Transum.

Transum Mathematics – Circle Pairs
Oct 31 2021

Mathematical Miscellany #59

Featuring…

Today is not only Halloween, it is Magic Day!

MathsPad Number Tricks

My post on Proof includes Magic or Number tricks which can be an ideal way into algebraic proof, try MathsPad – Number Tricks, one of the very generous collection of free resources on MathsPad (search on free), or be dramatic with Number Jumbler from Nrich! I have used this successfully with students from Year 7 to Year 12. Also try the suggested task, Double-Digit.

For a collection of mathemagical activities, try Transum Mathematics.

Transum Perfect Magic Square

You can find many activities on Transum, including Perfect Magic Square, which has 9 such puzzles, by the time we get to Puzzle 9 only two clues are given.

Wayne Chadburn – A little bit of maths each day

Tomorrow sees the start of November, so a good time to remind readers of Wayne Chadburn’s monthly calendars. He writes these calendars to provide regular, varied practice – a little bit of maths each day. In this academic year, he is producing calendars for year 11 students each month from September to April; the calendars for November 2021 are available. Note the three versions including crossover questions, Foundation, Foundation plus and Higher.

For November we have Barvember, from White Rose Maths, which was created to encourage the use of the bar model. Bar models can really help children visualise and then solve maths problems. See Bar Modelling.

Barvember – White Rose Maths

Nathan Day – factor Tree Puzzles

Back in July, Nathan Day published his very valuable CIMT Complete PDF. He now has a new website: Mr Day Maths where he is adding all the brilliant tasks, displays, resources, and thoughts he has shared on Twitter over the past few years to one place – a new treasure trove to explore! Try Factor Trees, for example, a set of (rather tricky) factor tree completion problems, that’s another lovely resource added to this Fill in the blanks collection.

For some quadratic questions to really get your students thinking, try these non-routine questions from @boss-maths. Follow the thread to the end for the answers!

Recovery Resources

Matt Woodfine continues to add to his brilliant site, a new addition is Level Up. a programme that targets basic numeracy.

From MEI, for KS3 have a look at these free GeoGebra interactive online classroom activities to support maths recovery at Key Stage 3. You can try the first three of five Algebra resources. Each lesson not only has a GeoGebra activity for use in the lesson, but also one for student independent learning. Full lesson plans and comprehensive notes for teachers are provided.

The collection will be expanded over the coming months to include similar sets of lessons for Number, Geometry and Measure, Ratio, and Statistics and Probability.

On the subject of GeoGebra, for the other end of the school, you will find on the Maths Emporium, a GeoGebra guide for A level Further Maths available to download or it is available with no login needed from the Edexcel website here. These activities have been produced to support teaching or could be used by students for independent study.

I have included many GeoGebra Resources on the GeoGebra series of pages. An extensive library of GeoGebra resources is available from Edexcel for GCSE (with many of these helpful for younger students also) and A Level.

Edexcel GeoGebra Resources

Edexcel GCSE GeoGebra Resources