This week, from November 9th to November sees the return of Maths Week England, an annual national celebration of mathematics. As well as the website, also available are Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pages. 

People have been asking the important 'why a national maths week' question. Of course we've already asked that ourselves: here are our six guiding aims: pic.twitter.com/m41jDgd75z

— Maths Week England (@maths_week) April 8, 2019

Note the menu item, Daily Pages, keep an eye on this during the week, each link becomes live on the day with a link to that day’s resources.

Our family of Sumaze! apps has proved very useful in engaging students with maths, especially those who are #homelearning.

We've therefore decided to make all four of them FREE from 9 November – ready to use during #MathsWeekEngland and beyond! https://t.co/OGvUeAox3U pic.twitter.com/iV5I3U4OU5

— MEI (@MEIMaths) November 4, 2020

There are several organisations partnering with Maths Week England including MEI whose brilliant Sumaze apps are free from 9th November and are running a Desmos Art competition. Whether or not you or your students are entering the competition note all the instructions for creating Desmos Art. MEI has provided written and video instructions for creating art suitable for students at three different levels,

See my post on Graph Art for a little more on Art with Desmos and WolframAlpha.

Have a look at the free Primary and Secondary resources; the secondary resources include from amsp, Where maths meets the world of work. The AMSP is working on videos, which will showcase the maths in different careers; each video will be paired with a resource for the classroom or for use online, so students can get a real taste of what the job may entail. Looking at the first video ‘Try being a Data Detective’ there are 4 versions of resource available for students from KS2 to KS5 Core Maths and A Level Maths.

These look excellent, the activities highlight the importance of maths skills in careers and link directly to the Maths Curriculum. This provides superb support for Mathematics Teachers to meet Gatsby Benchmarks 4 and 5; see Linking Curriculum Learning to Mathematics.

Other secondary resources include Maths Week Escape Room! This resource is free and includes 15 puzzles with hints and answers available at the end of the 21 page document.

Various competitions are running throughout the week, remember that the Royal Statistical Society has a young statisticians section, the RSS are running a Chart Competition for Primary School aged children.

Having studied some Operational Research modules at University, I am always interested to see the outreach work of the Operational Research Society and have in fact signed up for their educational webinars running during the week at 1pm, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

To finish – a roundup of the weeks events from @maths_week:

You: "If only there was an at-a-glance overview of the events taking place during Maths Week."

Us: #HereToServe #MathsWeekEngland #MWE20 pic.twitter.com/GqXZuLy6pQ

— Maths Week England (@maths_week) November 5, 2020

An update to my post on University Admissions tests on Mathematics for Students. Note Dr Frost’s excellent document of STEP, MAT and AEA questions aligned to the A Level specification. The AEA questions are legacy questions, extended solutions are currently available for the papers which have been used from the University of Warwick. Papers and Mark Schemes are available on Colmanweb. Full details are in the post.

A collection of resources on Transformations of Functions this week. The subject content for GCSE content includes: 13.sketch translations and reflections of a given function and for A Level we have:

From Transum, this wonderful resource, Transformations of Functions shows how various transformations affect the graph of a function. There are 16 possible transformations to try including examples of combinations of transformations. Having chosen your transformation you can try sketching the transformed function before revealing the answer.

Remember that Transum’s index is very helpful, if we look at the Graphs menu, we see numerous activities on graphs, also, on the left hand side activities mapped to a curriculum for graphs.

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From Andy Lutwyche’s brilliant Erica’s Errors series, try Erica’s Errors On Graphs and Transforming Functions. For thinking about what happens to coordinates under transformations, his Transforming Functions Worksheet is very helpful.

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For some helpful notes, check Mathisfun!. Scroll to the bottom of the page for some multiple choice questions to try. The examples include combinations of transformations.

A very helpful feature of the questions on Mathisfun is the very clear feedback, here for example, we see:

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From Chris McGrane on Starting Points Maths, try this graphs and transformations matching exercise.

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It is very helpful indeed when studying this topic to use graphing software to experiment and try out different functions. Note how easy it is using the Desmos graphing calculator to show a graph and then the same graph after a transformation. For example see here the graph of x² and (x+a)² (or click on  the image).See these Desmos pages – Transformations and Transformations – Advanced.

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This is a lovely resource on GeoGebra, Transformation of Graphs from Steven Fan can be used to explore combinations of transformations.

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Further helpful resources:

On Dr Frost, GCSE Graph Transformations and for A Level, Graphs and Transformations.for Year 1 and Functions and Graphs for Year 2.

Owen (Owen134866 on TES) has a library of Mathematics Further Mathematics teaching resources, these are really clearly structured with step by step examples. Graphs and Transformations can be found on TES in his A Level Pure Mathematics Year 1/AS Collection and Functions and Graphs which includes combinations of function can be found on TES in his A Level Pure Mathematics Year 2 Collection.

On ck12, 1.7 Function Graphs: Combined Transformations, there are several very useful examples of combining transformations. This content is very clear.

Maths Genie – Transforming Graphs GCSE questions and solutions. Sketching and Transforming Curves A Level questions and solutions.

Corbett Maths Transformations of Graphs practice questions.

On Exam Solutions, we have worked exam questions and helpful video tutorials on Translations of Graphs, reflections and stretches.

Notes from Mathisfun have been mentioned above, see also the A Level course material from CIMT which includes Graph Transforms. This encourages the use of graphing technology for various activities.

On Open Middle you can now get Google Slides versions of problems – Virtual Activities in Google Slides. The slides have been created by Dan Shuster based on a design by Robert Kaplinsky. Each link is a force-copy link to a Google Slides file. This introduction from Alisha Zare includes ideas for implementing these tasks for students. Note too the webinars available on Open Middle, one for Elementary and one for Secondary.

In an earlier post, I looked at this lovely problem, Create a System of Two Equations by Daniel Luevanos on Open Middle, accessible for students yet such a great task for mathematical thinking. We could discuss inequalities here as well as simultaneous equations. This is an 8th grade problem, so found in that collection. Note in that post the Graspable Math canvas and my Desmos page for this problem.

For another wonderful source of resources, from Tim Brzezinski, this brilliant GeoGebra book of Open Middle themed problems. Many problems in the GeoGebra book are exact digital analogues of those found on Open Middle’s site, with other problems characteristic of the Open Middle theme. Do check Tim’s collection of GeoGebra resources.

Or perhaps try creating a right -angled triangle:

And we also have from John Rowe, some Open Middle problems as Desmos activities, CL Newsletter October 2020: Open Middle; note the Open Middle template for anyone wishing to design their own activities.