Mar 16 2014

Revision Time Again

UK Department for Education Examinations Timetable

Once again – examinations draw near; with the timing of the Easter holidays the number of lessons left with our examination classes is small! My lower school classes also have tests coming up, so I find myself yet again thinking about revision. I do try and build in regular review and revision into our everyday lessons and I thought it would be useful to note various ideas and resources for review and revision in one collection. Where I have written on a resource before I have linked to the original post where you will find further details.

Short Basic Recall Questions
These are ideal for use anytime as perhaps a lesson starter.
Dynamic Maths from David Watkins

Dynamic Maths – David Watkins

MathsBox now a (very good value in my opinion) subscription site has an extensive collection of quality resources, there are many free samples so you can see and use several very useful resources. The settlers and Bingo activities are ideal for a series of short recall / revision type questions. I do like the attractive presentation of the resources on this site (as well as the content of course!)

Bingo from Mathsbox

There are thousands of diagnostic questions available on Craig Barton’s and Somon Woodhead’s Diagnostic questions site.

Diagnostic Questions – Craig Barton & Simon Woodhead

As shown in this post it is possible to create a slideshow of the questions you want for your class. Note the ever growing collection of questions, including a section for post 16 students.

Mega Maths Quiz from Ben Cooper

Further sites with a series of short questions include Maths Teaching – Higher Level Revision Activities and on TES resources, also on his own site, Ben Cooper’s amazing (and huge!) collection of multiple choice questions covering many topics.

Other Suggested Revision Activities

Here’s the diagram – what’s the question
The Collective Memory resources on TES can make an excellent revision activity, students look at posters and then have to understand and recall that information. These can be used in a variety of ways which are fully described in the article. (A further set of resources is available here). Last year my GCSE students created several posters of their own which they found a very useful revision activity.
Mini-tests (or self checks)
Treasure Hunts – see the resources on Mathsbox for some lovely resources. These will get students moving round the room. On the subject of moving round the room, you could try an activity using post-its; see for example this Surds post-it challenge on TES.
Tarsia puzzles, these are available for all ages including post 16.

Examination Questions
Of course! You do not have to just work through a paper though – try questions on a theme or all A* questions! As usual there is no need to reinvent the wheel because there are generous teachers out there who have shared their resources. Steve Blades has an astonishing collection of 100 hard GCSE questions – all with fully worked solutions (and note all the other lovely resources on his site). Dan Walker on TES has created a mock paper which has only A* questions! You will be pleased to know that Dan’s resource includes model solutions!

Searching On TES I really like Tom Riley’s resource – exam questions and solutions but also with clues! Students match up the clues to a collection of exam questions on 10 higher topics, then use the clues to answer the questions. Something I do in the run up to exams is try questions in timed conditions as I think that is valuable – even for very short sessions. I work out how long they should have according to the number of marks (telling them to start another question if they finish or are stuck), it strikes me that I can make this an even more valuable exercise if I provide clues on the back of the questions that they can look at (or not!)

Sep 29 2013

STEM Learning

STEM Learning hosts hundreds of Mathematics resources, (resister free here). Try exploring the extensive collection of Mathematics resources.

I’ll mention just a few here; these are resources I found of particular interest for my own teaching.

By Susan Wall, this collection of resources on Active A-Level Mathematics is excellent, I have used several of Susan’s activities very successfully in the classroom; I do like Thinking Questions, open–ended questions which should certainly make your students do just that – really think. (Added to Rich Questions).

From MEI the MEI GCSE Mathematics Extension Materials are aimed at students who are working towards GCSE Mathematics and would benefit from exposure to mathematics beyond the GCSE specifications. There are many excellent ideas here which encourage students to explore concepts. In fact some of these activities would be a useful introduction for older students.

GAIM Investigation 1

The Graded Assessment in Mathematics (GAIM) resources includes a wonderful collection of 80 activities for investigations and problem solving with accompanying teachers notes.

The collection from the Royal Academy of Engineering includes high quality Mathematics for Engineering Exemplars, for example a look at Formula One Race Strategy. It strikes me that these materials would be useful for many students as they develop literacy as well as mathematics. Notes and solutions are provided.

cre8ate digital design – working with photos

The cre8ate maths project features resources applying maths to key areas of the economy focussing on functional mathematics skills. Digital Design for example includes a ‘Working with Photos’ activity to help students understand enlargement.

The complete, superb collection of Improving Learning in Mathematics materials is hosted here. (See this page for associated resources for this collection).

The Durham Maths Mysteries are activities based on cards with statements about the area of mathematics being covered. Students then have to use reasoning to decide how to tackle the the task.

Now here’s a collection I am delighted to find, we used to use the New National Curriculum Mathematics from Nelson Thornes, how useful to have the set available electronically, there are some great problems amongst these pages! Now I can project them on the IWB. The set includes the A/A* book aimed at able students. I was always particularly fond of the problem solving exercise in Book 6! (See Number, Problem Solving, Exercise 1:1); Book 6 also has some rather good exercises on Equations in the Algebra section).

So much to explore, so many lovely collections! A couple more that caught my eye – Nuffield’s Making Sense of Data with its emphasis on analysis and interpretation and Decision Mathematics from the OR Society.

This post took a seriously long time to write as I came upon so many resources I know will be useful in my teaching! I have added a copy of the post to the resources section so it can easily be found again in future.

Jun 23 2013

Mathcentre

A site I use frequently is mathcentre which was developed by a group from the Universities of Loughborough, Leeds and Coventry, the Maths Stats and OR Network and the Educational Broadcasting Services Trust. See this link for a list of topics. Reading about the news from mathcentre I see there are leaflets available mathcentre and statstutor showing the range of resources available.

mathcentre – Maths Tutor

Looking at the second page of the mathcentre leaflet, I noticed mathtutor which provides mathcentre resources conveniently structured as a course. I shall refer my students to that this week, I want them to look at the quotient rule in my absence (I’m very much looking forward to the annual TSM residential workshop at Keele University) and plan to point them in the direction of resources they can use – a flipped approach! (See ‘Prepare ahead‘ here). I’ll see what they have learned on my return.

The mathcentre site includes extensive resources. Many of my students like the quick reference leaflets which are available on numerous topics. There are also teach yourself booklets, revision booklets, videos and diagnostic tests. Resources are available for staff and students. This is a site well worth exploring and recommending to your students.

Apr 21 2013

Hwb Resources….and more on Mini-Tests!

A collection of resources are available from Hwb (the all Wales Learning Platform, note this now includes all the material from the NGfL Wales website). Select Find and Use to explore the resources. The resources are also hosted on TES. (Note that the echalk resources such as the excellent transformations interactives are no longer free).

This on Developing Mathematical and Thinking Skills is authored by Melanie Blount. The resource can be used online or it is possible to download a zipped file. The concept cartoons would display very well on the interactive whiteboard and perhaps provide a useful starter activity.
Resources in this set I particularly like include Large Numbers and True Sometimes. Large numbers consists of a set of 20 questions (with the option to show answers) with big answers! With questions such as ‘How many mobile phones are in use in the world?’ this would make a very engaging lesson activity and would be ideal to use when teaching standard index form. The True Sometimes resource is a set of 10 statements; students must decide if the statements are always, sometimes or never true. (There are links to some Always / Sometimes / Never questions from other sources in the Rich Questions post.)

Week Thoughts
Mini-Tests
Last week, writing on revision I wrote about my use of ‘mini tests’. I have used several this week with a variety of classes, with Year 12 I started with some basic calculus in one lesson and trigonometric equations in another. Watching them mark and correct their work confirmed my belief that these mini-tests are very useful; concepts and ideas we may think of as basics are not always as secure as they might be. I have started making a note of questions to ask them as I notice any misconceptions.

Coming up to examinations I often use a timed exam question as a starter which could be just a few minutes, I work out the marks per minute rate for the exam for timing.

I recently set a homework for my Year 11s to look at some specific topics and let them know they would have 35 minutes in class to answer exam questions. We then went through the questions straight away, they marked the paper and I collected their work to see how they did; I always tell my classes I am looking at their careful marking and corrections as much as their original answers. I was amused to see that one of my students had headed her paper ‘Mini-Mock’.

I have started a new page under resources for these mini-tests in case they are useful – just four there at the moment but more to come.

WolframAlpha – Handwritten!

: WolframAlpha: Handwritten style plot y=(x-2)(x-1)(x+3)

Reading the WolframAlpha community newsletter recently I was amused by their April fool on the introduction of the WolframAlpha Handwritten Knowledge Engine. It seems this has proved rather popular so what was originally intended for an April fool has now been made generally available. I really like the look of these diagrams, I suspect they will appeal to students and teachers, look at this number line for example.

WolframAlpha: handwritten style number line

Apr 7 2013

Why should I memorize something when I know where to find it?

According to this story, told by Nathan Shaw Einstein said this. Now I am very pleased that I share my own ‘capture everything in such a way that you can find it again’ ideas with Albert Einstein! I have found some resources I really like recently – so the usual question – where to put them so I can find them again?

Enrichment
I mentioned in a recent post that I came across an outstanding resource on Combinatorics questions by Dr Jamie Frost thanks to the TES Mathematics forum; well Dr Frost has now made his excellent enrichment materials available on The Reimann Zeta Club. This clearly belongs on a list! So I added it to the Enrichment list (for lots of lists see the ‘I’m Looking For …‘ page. As well as adding this resource I checked the various links and also added the Brilliant website I have talked about recently.

Thinking about Enrichment, my own view is that this should be a natural part of the curriculum for all students and made me wonder where my Rich Tasks list ends and enrichment list starts (I solved the problem by adding the Rich tasks list to the Enrichment list!) A recent excellent addition to the Rich tasks list is Jonny Griffiths’ Carom-Maths -activities to bridge the gap between A Level and University.

Staying with the subject of Rich tasks, one of the entries on that list is the list of problems from the National Strategies site to develop mathematical processes and applications; those archives make me a little nervous – will they stay? I decided to create an Evernote shared notebook which lists those resources including links to to the problems on Nrich. Another recent addition to the Rich Tasks list is this excellent interactive from NGfL CYMRU to explore the Painted Cube problem (explained clearly here on Nrich)

Starters
I recently read this post by Don Steward and it struck me what a great starter ‘Sum and Product’ would make. I have so many links for starters they have a WordPress blog all to themselves and I have added the Sum and product problem Don describes to the Algebra page there; also new on Mathematics Starters and Plenaries is this link to MathsStarters.net which has a growing collection of starter activities (added to the Collections page); I particularly like the Bingo resources.

Resources
Working on an excellent project for TES recently (more on that later) I came across an excellent resource on fractions by Kaszal, the resource is an A5 worksheet consisting of 10 fraction calculations, some of which have mistakes and/or inefficient solutions. Students enjoy marking examples like this and it can lead to some excellent class discussions. I have added this to the Spot the Mistake page under Resources.

Douglas Butler’s comment on my post last week made me realise that I should include Autograph here, so a new Autograph page is now available under resources. (All resources on this site are free to use, I have included Autograph (for graphing, geometry, statistics and probability) here as although it is paid-for software, Autograph viewer and all the excellent resources available on line are completely free to use and do not require the Autograph software to be installed.