Happy New Year folks!
Once the fog of the festive season lifts, the creeping realisation that planning needs doing starts to dawn. To give you a helping hand, here is my website of the week:
This website has lots of good ideas/pics/videos, a clear content index and links to other useful sites. Enjoy!
So, what to craft for that maths geek special someone … may we suggest polyhedral dice pillows?
These squashy beauties are from ¡The Anticraft!. There are full instructions and helpful diagrams on the website. These would also be a great classroom resource.
Warning: the folks at Anticraft are honest in their language, so don’t click if you prefer subtler prose.
Look what my class did today:
We used a hexagonal Tarsia puzzle on expanding single brackets to create large hexagons.
The puzzles were stuck on paper, cut out and the edges reinforced with tape. Twelve hexagons make a splendid snowflake. Once it was stuck together, the wall display was as tall as a Y7 pupil.
Just think what you could do with Tarsia puzzle shapes: snowflakes from hexagons, christmas trees from triangles and bunting from dominoes.
If you want more puzzles, visit Mr Barton Maths for a plethora of resources.
Earlier this term, my colleague, J, and myself attended the rather brilliant #TMNorthWest at Calderstones School. We were particularly inspired by the idea of independent or ‘Help yourself’ learning walls. We’ve chosen this as our Departmental focus for the year and once we have trialled it, we hope to install a learning wall in every maths room.
The basic premise is that ideas and key points are collected in themed pockets, which students can go to whenever they require assistance or a hint on how to progress. The cards are numbered and indexed. The idea was introduced by Claire Gillies in the context of English lessons.
The self help cards were stored in hanging wallpockets:
Claire used the Kusiner wallpockets from Ikea.
There are six pockets in this particular product. We have chosen to split them into the following categories:
*Number
*Algebra
*Data
*Shape
*Using equipment
*Index
We designed our cards to have methods, misconceptions, Levels/Grades, a question with worked answer and possibly QR codes to useful videos.
Now, sitting and designing a self help card layout is easy. Completing them is a much bigger task! We have decided to start with KS3 and have selected key objectives from the Y7 scheme of work.
We also have GCSE classes who sat their exams last week and, quite frankly, need a break.
This sounds like fate …
The plan is that Year 11 students will take Y7 objectives and write self-help cards. Teachers will moderate/edit what they write.
Well, that’s our plan for a bit of independent student power. I’ll continue to post about our walls as they develop.
On 5th November, I stumbled across the Skills Workshop website when I was looking for a quick Guy Fawkes Night resource. I found a nice Functional Skills task on planning a Bonfire Night party.
My Year 10 Foundation GCSE pupils really focussed on the task and actually asked for more lessons like this.
I used an activity based on units of alcohol, from this site, as an extension task.
We had some interesting conversations about how easy it is to exceed the daily allowances for alcohol consumption. PSCHE in a Maths lesson!
Have a browse of the website and see what you can find!
As promised, I’ve been trying out ideas from TeachMeet North West at Calderstones School. Here’s the first post:
My colleague J had mentioned Discovery Puzzlemaker last term, but I’d not had time to try it out. Then Fiona Bate @fibate used it as part of her presentation on ‘Profound thinking in the classroom’.
How I used Puzzlemaker
I decided to test this out on my Year 9 students – they are a bright bunch and there are a lot of them. I put out tile puzzles on sheets of A5 and the class settled to the starter task, after they’d got their books out. There were lots of different strategies and eventually everyone cracked the code – the formula for the area of a circle.
Blank puzzle
Different strategies
The funniest part was later in the lesson. A student put his hand up and said he couldn’t remember the rule for the area of a circle. More than one of his peers pointed out he’d just spent ten minutes cracking a code where the rule was given and it was still on his desk in front of him!
Lesson Objectives
Luke O’Hanlon @funkwalkee did a presentation on ‘Ways to engage with Learning Objectives’. This linked nicely with using Puzzlemaker to discover the aim of the lesson, as well as encourage independent learning and problem solving. Once the class had cracked the code they knew what they’d be doing that day.
Puzzlemaker
As you can see, Discovery Puzzlemaker is a really useful tool. I’m going to use some of the larger puzzles as homework tasks for my lower ability classes as I can tailor them to their specific needs. I’m starting with the ‘Hidden Message’ task to reinforce circle vocabulary.
Thank you to J, Fiona and Luke for sharing this site/their ideas.
I found this really useful book set on a second-hand market stall in the summer. I felt it was worth a look for £3.
It is Aba-Conundrums by Evelyn B. Christensen, published by Fat Brain Toy Co. The set includes a soroban, 120 number puzzles (& solutions) on spiral-bound dry-wipe card and dry-wipe pen.
The problem solving elements of the tasks are really good for improving basic number skills.
After boring four generations of my family with it, I did a bit of web-searching and came across the Soroban Cymru website – don’t worry if you don’t ‘siarad Cymraeg’, it’s in English.
I think proper use of sorobans could be a really useful tool for developing the understanding of number in low ability Year 6/7. I know they are used by all abilities in Asia, but pupils here don’t generally know how to use a soroban correctly and it could be a way to make numbers more interesting for those who disconnected from maths at a young age. I’m certainly going to try it out this term.
You can get basic sorobans on Amazon from about £2.50.