From Simon Haines, comes an excellent new site for learners and teachers of A Level Mathematics, most definitely one to keep any eye on. Do explore. On Mathematico, you will find resources for learning and teaching online, including Videos, tutorials, interactives and more. Additionally teachers can create classes and invite students. Follow @mathematico_org on Twitter.
Quadratics – Factorising quadratics
I do like the clarity of explanations in the tutorials I have seen on Mathematico and high quality of the resources; the site is uncluttered and visually appealing. Examples are carefully chosen and progress from fluency to challenge. The Pure topics covered as I write are as follows:
Each section here leads to a new menu.
Looking at Functions for example, we see the following:
Activities are varied, looking at Domain and Range for example, we have a card matching activity.
For exercises and activities learners can choose to display hints.
One can so happily get lost in Mathematics on this site…!
If, like me, you were ever a bit mystified by the dot and cross products, this problem might make you go "oh!"
As well as Pure Topics, an Enrichment section is under development – there are some lovely questions on factorials I see as well as a Geometry section.
I think the best way to describe the thinking behind this site is in Simon’s own words.
“I’m making Mathematico because I want to help students build confidence by mastering key skills, and then put those skills to use in a variety of increasingly challenging problems which highlight the connections with previous topics. I sometimes feel like my students would appreciate going through problems in more detail than lesson time allows, and they all have different needs. With Mathematico, they can practise skills until they feel ready to move on, get in depth explanations for every problem, keep on top of the course with spaced repetition, and give their teacher realtime feedback on what they’re finding difficult. I’ve been using it with my classes this year and it has been brilliant, not least because it has helped with remote learning. Over the next couple of years, Mathematico will grow to cover the whole A Level and several extension topics so students and teachers can benefit from it as a learning resource, revision guide, and hopefully a source of inspiration for those interested in STEM careers.”
And so to the annual update on Mathematical Advent Calendars. On Teachit Maths their Interactive advent calendaris a free sample resource available to everybody. (Remember that the free subscription on this excellent site includes hundreds of high-quality pdf resources.) Teachit Maths describe the resource as an advent calendar in the form of a presentation focusing mainly on mathematics. Suitable for KS3/4. (KS3/4 is UK age 11-16). For each day you will reveal a festive fact, joke, teaching idea, activity or game.
From Andy Lutwyche we have his Christmas Advent Calendar which covers lots of different topics in number, algebra, shape & space and data and gets progressively more difficult as you go on.
Also from Andy, try his Advent Calendar – Solving Linear Equations. Students answer the questions (the solutions are 1 to 24) and each answer links to a word; when the words are put in numerical order an entire joke is revealed! And another…for older students, Differentiation Advent Calendar where students are asked to find the gradient of a curve at a given point. Cheesy joke included!
Advent Calendars from Andy LutwycheGCSE Revision – A Lutwyche
Also from Andy, this “Advent” Calendar is a set of GCSE Higher non-calculator questions. Full answers are provided on a series of slides. Further revision calendars are included later in this post.
Also on TES you can find an excellent calendar from Mark Dawes. This is a lovely resource with over 30 problem-solving tasks for use in maths lessons in December. Suitable for starter activities, they span a range of abilities in KS3 and KS4. As well as the calendar the resource includes worksheets for some of the problems and an Excel file showing the difficulty of the tasks.
I do like Mark’s suggestions for use in class, he has given instructions for manipulating the resource so teachers can choose the problem they want for any day!
J Calderwood has provided three Advent Calendars – Advanced Higher, HIgher and N5 Maths for Scottish Students. A great revision resource which could be adapted for different courses.
Transum Advent Calendar
From a favourite site, where you can find so many excellent resources, Transum has an Advent Calendar. Behind each door, you will find a Christmaths activity, laugh at a cracker joke and solve a mathematical word puzzle. (See this post for more on Transum.)
Try this Mathsvent Calendar from Phil Bruce. For December 1st put the baubles in size order along the tinsel starting with the smallest at the bottom.
Very usefully, you can find all 24 puzzles listed by topic. These puzzles are great, extensions are given for many of the problems too.
Nrich publishes annual Advent Calendars – one for Primary and one for Secondary. Both feature twenty-four activities, one for each day in the run-up to Christmas. Both calendars this year feature a wonderful variety of tasks from twenty-four different past features. Both Nrich and Plus Magazine have published wonderful collections of Advent resources, clearly, for an Advent Calendar, the year does not matter so we have lots of choices! See for example this whole collection of advent calendars on Nrich, note the different themes available – a Sudoku for each day perhaps? Maybe you want to play a game?The 2016 Primary Calendar featured tasks to encourage mathematical habits of mind something we need to encourage in students of all ages.
From Nrich in 2017 we have a calendar for Primary and one for Secondary each containing twenty-four problem-solving activities, one for each day in the run-up to Christmas. The secondary tasks come from the excellent Short Problems collection.
Alternatively, try this higher GCSE revision quiz, very attractively presented as an Advent calendar, answers are included.
Alex Pett – Advent Calendar
Alex Pett created his advent calendar complete with history and problems for each day. Alex has provided a pdf versionor use as aGoogle document. For an Activeinspire resource, try this version.
A new page has been added to the top menu, Updates features recent changes to posts as well as showing recent posts.
Desmos Classroom Activity – Ben Sparks
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.
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
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.
Gatsby 4
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.
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.
University Admissions Tests – Resources
A Twitter block – Ben Gordon’s study strategies for Maths look great.
UPDATED: Applying study strategies to maths. Now includes summary of retrieval, spaced practice, elaboration, concrete examples and interleaving. Maths specific guidance on retrieval, spaced practice and interleaving. Others to follow. PDF: https://t.co/qDxtMJ2DYz#mathschatpic.twitter.com/otMh00C656
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