Featuring…

• Revision Cards
• Stella’s Stunners
• Advent Update
• Maths in a minute
• Tea Break Training
• Preparation for STEP

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

For 10 months, https://t.co/Vjww48FN72 has provided free resources like starters, games and worksheets. I'm excited that the feature list now includes revision cards & online tests.
Revision cards – side 1 examples/knowledge, side 2 practice qu@mathsjem @ColleenYoung #mathschat pic.twitter.com/w8LgbEhO7s

— Matt Woodfine (@MattTheApp) September 5, 2021

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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 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.

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🎄 Get into the festive spirit with our Advent Calendars🎄

From 1 December you can access our STEM Advent Calendars which contain 24 days of teaching support including CPD, resources and festive activities!

Sign up free today to be ready for door no.1! https://t.co/2ibBZ7oBpB pic.twitter.com/qhJrKMdyUR

— STEM Learning Mathematics (@STEMmaths) November 25, 2021

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

Featuring…

• Resources from Andy Lutwyche
• White Rose Maths Year 11 end of term assessments and bar models
• NECTM KS3 (age11-14) Subject Knowledge Audits
• WolframAlpha – increasing and decreasing functions
• Literacy Skills in Mathematics

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

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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 …

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:

⭐ Here is our solution to day 10's challenge question, completed on our new Bar Model Digital Tool!

Did you manage to solve it? 💭

💻 Try it for yourself here: https://t.co/XBhLI1sgnC pic.twitter.com/n1KmwxyfAG

— White Rose Maths Secondary (@WRMathsSec) November 12, 2021

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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Featuring…

• Magic Day
• A little bit of maths each day – November Calendars and Barvember
• Nathan Day, Interwoven Maths – website with fantastic resources
• Some brilliant questions on quadratics to get you and your students thinking!
• Recovery resources – MEI KS3 and Matt Woodfine’s Level Up
• Edexcel Geogebra resources – GCSE through to Further Maths

Today is not only Halloween, it is Magic Day!

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.

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.

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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.

✍️ Here's our challenge question as part of our @TTSResources Barvember competition!

Send in your solutions to win a Teacher Edition Bar Model Kit, perfect for using throughout Barvember! 🤩 pic.twitter.com/QWxssF156Z

— White Rose Education (@WhiteRoseEd) October 28, 2021

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Back in July, Nathan Day published his very valuable CIMT Complete PDF. His website: Interwoven Maths Maths has all the brilliant tasks, displays, resources, and thoughts he has shared on Twitter over the past few years – 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.

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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!

Five *non-routine* Qs involving monic quadratics.
Most ought to be doable pretty much by inspection.
[Q5 is a reworded version of something I tweeted last week—hopefully it's now clear that there's no need to expand!] pic.twitter.com/mkKPxqSTbs

— Sudeep (@boss_maths) October 28, 2021

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Recovery Resources

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

Pupils need to get 13+ to level up. All resources (more vids soon!) are available to students to prepare at home whilst the test is frequently done as a starter in lessons. Test is either paper based or online. @mathsjem @mrbartonmaths @ColleenYoung @whisto_maths @WhatTheTrigMath pic.twitter.com/AeGrLU1eum

— Matt Woodfine (@MattTheApp) October 30, 2021

We’ve just released a fantastic set of free interactive online classroom activities to support maths recovery at Key Stage 3.

The resources are available on GeoGebra and focus on algebra, with more topics to be added in the coming months.https://t.co/X6lvggfglA pic.twitter.com/BuyybJ8X3G

— MEI (@MEIMaths) October 29, 2021

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 GCSE GeoGebra Resources