Return to the Lesson Planning series of pages.
See also, Literacy Skills in Mathematics.
A starter could perhaps be a crossword with essential vocabulary for the topic being studied. Make your own crosswords with the excellent free software – Eclipse. The program is very straightforward to use and includes a clear tutorial section. The glossary and dictionaries linked to below could provide inspiration for crossword clues. Transum created this interactive crossword with the software from Eclipse.
For checking definitions, try the KS1 – KS3 glossary from NCETM. Useful and clearly illustrated dictionaries are the Mathisfun dictionary or Jenny Eather’s Maths Dictionary for Kids, and note the section on charts.
For the terminology used in question papers, from Edexcel – I do like this Teacher’s Guide to Command Words, not only do we have commentary on what is expected from students when a particular commonly used command word is used but examples of questions to exemplify the use of the word.
All the examination boards have very clear resources illustrating command words, something we can incorporate into our teaching.
See also this document: Question Paper terminology (I have seen this document around the web, I believe the original is from AQA).
Try Freyer Models, you can find a whole collection on Freyer-Model.co.uk. See also my post on Knowledge Organisers.
One of the Shine & Write Activities from Transum Software is Mathanagrams, these could be displayed for students to solve and they could then be asked for a sentence using that term.
There is in fact a whole collection of Vocabulary activities on Transum.
Or from Spencer Riley’s TeacherLed site, try Maths Keyword Jumble; given a definition can you work out the keyword?
Return to the Lesson Planning series of pages.
On MacTutor from The University of St Andrews, see Jeff Miller’s pages, including: