Category Archives: General

226. Summer Sand

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Well, it’s time for the Sandpit to head for the Seaside! All the fun activities have been saved up for the Autumn term so make sure you come back in September.

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Image credit: http://nscharlieno5.blogspot.co.uk/

Before we pack up our classrooms I’d like to reflect on what this time of year means. Our students have received their end of year reports, enjoyed Sports Day and promised to keep in contact with each over the Summer. Our colleagues have briefed next year’s teacher on their new classes, updated schemes of work and sorted out what planning needs to be done over the Summer ready for September. But what about those staff who aren’t coming back?

I’ve recently been to both a leaving event and a retirement event. In that last week in school we should make sure we tell our friends how much we appreciate them, no matter how busy we are.

I’d especially like to wish L all the best as she moves to the other side of the country. If anyone wanted to meet an outstanding teacher who cares about every child they teach and supports their colleagues no matter what, then L would be that teacher. Good luck!

223. Let them eat custard!

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This post isn’t a resource, more of a source of ideas. We tell students that maths is about problem solving, but how many problems are fictitious?
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Here is a problem, taken directly from ‘real life’ when a friend was making custard on sunday evening.

The question
Do you think the instructions are wrong?
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Does 2.75 litres of water seem right? Use the whole packet? How much is in the packet?

The problem
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The custard powder had been bought from the wholesalers. It was such good value because it was a catering pack.

  • If the pack weighs 605g, how much would you need for one portion?
  • How much water would you need?
  • How could you decide if 55ml was a decent size portion?
  • How many pint jugs would the fifty-five 55ml portions fill?

If you have access to a wholesaler or talk nicely to the canteen, you will be surprised how much proportion work you can find in catering size value packs

By the way, my friend did a couple of calculations and a bit of estimating resulting in a large, but tasty, bowl of custard.

222. Gadget of the week

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In an ideal world you would issue a homework sheet with a deadline and then dutiful students would hand in beautiful pieces of work on the specified date.

In reality:

  • the work is handed in
  • the work is handed in late
  • the work isn’t handed in because they’ve lost it
  • the work isn’t handed in because they’ve left it at home
  • what homework, I’ve got nothing in my planner?

I have a standard practice of printing 10% (or more) extra worksheets than I need given the track record of some of my students. Let’s just say lunch detentions happen so regularly for certain bods that they are referred to as ‘lunch dates’, much to the amusement of their friends! The annoying bit is finding/handing out the spare sheets and chasing deadlines. There is also the classic response of ‘I couldn’t get a new sheet because I couldn’t find you, Miss’.

I found this genius gadget in my local Asda (Walmart), but you could recreate it with laminated card and a pin-board.

 

  • In each day section I record the homework set on that day – addresses the issue of not knowing there was homework.
  • Each week I transfer last week’s deadlines across – no excuse for not knowing when work is due in.
  • Underneath each day I pin a plastic wallet with the spare copies (but not the master copy) of the worksheet set – students can access spare sheets whenever they need to and I can find them quickly too (no more rummaging in folders/drawers)
  • The board is stuck on the wall, near the main board so it is in the eyeline of the students – a constant reminder.

I’ve been using it for a month now and students are already helping themselves when they lose sheets. It’s also a much quicker reminder for me too.

The last word of this post has to go to my Year 11 frequent homework dodger:

‘We’ve got no excuse for not doing our homework now, have we Miss?’

221. The ‘Average’ wage

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Here’s a problem on averages that has been used by many teachers over the years. I like the additional ‘sting in the tail’ as it really makes pupils think about real life and it is an instant use of calculating the mean from an ungrouped frequency table.

hiring

Image Credit: www.vivcorecruitment.co.uk

The Problem
A job advert says that the average worker at OfficesRUs earns over £30 thousand pounds.

OfficesRUs Salaries:

  • Director   £100,000
  • Manager   £50,000
  • Sales Person   £35,000
  • Clerical Assistant   £22,000
  • Trainees   £15,000

Is the advert true?

The Discussion

If pupils calculate the mean they will find it is £44,400 – this makes the advert true

But why would a company have the same number of employees at each pay grade?

The Sting

OfficesRUs is a clerical agency, offering temporary clerical staff for other businesses. Their staff numbers are:

  • 1 Director   £100,000
  • 4 Managers   £50,000
  • 8 Sales People   £35,000
  • 200 Clerical Assistants   £22,000
  • 4 Trainees   £15,000

Is the advert still true?

The Result

My class worked out how much each pay grade would get and added them to find the total salary cost. Some pupils then divided by 5, but discovered that the mean would be far greater than the Director’s salary. They then realised they had to total up the employees too. The mean turned out to be less than £30,000. This then leads to a discussion of which measure of average is best in this situation.

This is the working out from my board. The original problem is in black, with the sting and working in red. We linked the individual pay grade calculations to the work we had done on means from ungrouped frequency tables. The layout of the calculations is very similar to our tables.

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This  was a really good investigative starter to bridge between a theory and problem solving lesson. You could get pupils to see if they can find any examples of job adverts with average salaries in and make up their own problems.

 

220. Terrific Tiles

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I take no responsibility for this blog post. It is all down to the amazing teachers I work with. We have recently had our Year 6 open day and one of the activities was this amazing tessellation:

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As you can see each rhombus has a pattern or picture which links to the next rhombus. You can stand in front of the full wall display and spend ages tracing the different routes across the wall. The clever use of colour means that from a distance the wall pops out as 3D cubes. Older students at school have commented that the display is ‘Awesome!’ and ‘Amazing!.

 

It was inspired by Vi Hart’s videos on snakes and doodling: YouTube

218. Liverpool Maths

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You know you are a Maths teacher when you go around a British city seeing shapes and maths everywhere AND you take pictures of it! Here are some discussion starters based around the area of Liverpool ONE:

Curved building
What would the plans and elevations look like? Why do you think the side windows are parallelograms not rectangles? Are the end windows similar shapes? What mathematical word describes distorting a shape? (Skew)

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Stacked shapes
What would a plan and elevation of this building look like? What shape is the base of the projected level? (Trapezium)

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Sine wave
Is this an approximation of a sine wave? Is it representing a convergent sequence?

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Triangular roof
Why are triangles so popular in architecture?

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Interesting shopfront projection
What would an aerial view look like? Would you see the zigzag projections?

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Security door
What shapes can you see? Is it like isometric or squared dotty paper?

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Curved stairwell
What mathematical things can you see? Are the handrails parallel?

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Circular skylight
What features of a circle can you see?

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217. My Learning Wall

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Last week I responded to a request on Twitter from @missradders for people to share their wall display ideas. I tweeted a picture of my ‘Learning Wall’, which is a collection of the best ideas from other teachers from this year. I was surprised by the number of teachers who liked it and wanted to know what was on there. So here you go – my ‘Learning Wall’ with interactive links to where all the ideas and resources came from. If you hover your mouse over the image hotspots will appear. It is made using the ThingLink website, using a free teacher subscription.