It’s December…it’s that time of year again…!
Select Mathematical Advent calendars for a complete collection of Advent Calendars. The collection includes activities for young children through to A Level students (UK age 16-18).
A new page has been added to the top menu, Updates features recent changes to posts as well as showing recent posts.
I often check and update posts and pages, particularly very popular ones. I will use the Updates page to note any changes. So currently you will see that The Standards Unit page has been recently updated, not only with the HTML5 software but with some Desmos Classroom Activities by Ben Sparks for some of the Standards Unit Tasks.
We also have from AMSP, Where maths meets the world of work which has been added to Linking Curriculum Learning to Careers.
Further updates include links to GeoGebra resources on my Edexcel A level page and Jonny Giffiths’ wonderful publications on Free Books.
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.
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.
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:
Experimenting with the new WordPress block editor! Looking at various posts…
Gallery Block
For some excellent resources to help students prepare for University Admissions Tests. see this updated post.
A Twitter block – Ben Gordon’s study strategies for Maths look great.
A collection of Knowledge Organisers for Mathematics KS3 to A Level… In a post on Cognitive Science in the Classroom, I mentioned Knowledge Organisers, or to be more precise I mentioned Kris Boulton’s “Why Maths Teachers Don’t Like Knowledge Organisers,” Kris has written on why they are less applicable to maths. Certainly, I had not used…
I have referred to the HELM (Helping Engineers Learn Mathematics) notes many times over the years on this blog. They are referred to on the Notes and Examples page for Further Mathematics as well as in many individual blog posts, for example, Mechanics – Dimensional Analysis, Differential Equations, and Further Calculus. If you have not…
A happy discovery on Twitter, a conversation with Christian Bokhove of Southampton University led me to another home for the Wisweb widgets. Try the Digital Mathematics Environment from the Freudenthal Institute. To access the resources mentioned here: Choose Open DME for student Login as guest. Explore Secondary Education (also the DME Widget list) A…
This is an outstanding resource – there are so many excellent activities here for the secondary classroom. Start by reading Improving Learning in Mathematics – Malcolm Swan. The following links give you access to the resources, also some IWB resources. Craig Braton has all the Standards Unit Teaching resources pdf files and PowerPoints on mrbartonmaths For the…
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.