Category Archives: General

301. How much is my sandwich?

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A visual discussion starter for you:

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These three pots of sandwich filling cost £1 each. The flavours are egg mayo, chicken & bacon and cheese & onion.
How much would the 182g chicken filling cost if it weighed the same as the others?
The large pots contain 5 servings and the small pot contains 3 servings – are they the same size serving?

If you zoom in on the picture you could generate your own questions based on the nutritional information eg calories per serving.

You could extend this to the snacks in students’ bags. Are they as healthy as they think?

300. Name that Number

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Simple little starter for you today. Minimum preparation, personalised challenge.

Equipment

  • Paper or whiteboards

Instructions

  • Hand out mini whiteboards or use paper.
  • Write the alphabet on the board.
  • Assign each letter a value. You can go for the standard 1 to 26 or choose a mixture of big/small numbers – maybe a negative number or two.
  • Get each student to write down their name and associated numbers.
  • Write a target number eg 100 on your board.
  • Each student must use the numbers of their name to make the target. If they can’t, they must get as close as they can.
  • If they make that target either find another way or change the target number.
  • Alternatively once they’ve finished they could use their classmate’s name – did they use the same method?

Variations

  • You can make this as easy or difficult as you want by changing the target or the alphabet numbers.
  • Throw in some fractions or decimals – go all the way and thrown in algebraic indices or standard form. You are the best person to judge your students’ level of challenge..
  • You could allow surnames, you could insist all numbers are used.
  • Put three alphabet variations on the board for mixed ability teaching.
  • If you are teaching a class not in the English language (eg Welsh, Greek, Russian), where the alphabet is different, this still works just assign each letter/character a number in the same way.
  • The possibilities are huge – have fun!

Note: this isn’t numerology, it’s proper Maths!

294. Rough guide to new AQA GCSE Maths course

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If you are using the new AQA specification for GCSE Maths, you might want to know that I’ve edited the Rough Guide to new GCSE Maths post to include an appropriate AQA version. It’s a collaboration with the splendid @missradders. Click on the link to view the post with all the versions.

293. Boxing Bounds

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I thought this would make a nice little starter – address a few different topics, bit of problem solving, all over in 15 minutes. How wrong I was!

The Question: A company packs toys into boxes which measure 12cm by 8cm by 10cm (to the nearest centimetre). The boxes are packed into crates which measure 1m by 0.75m by 0.8m (to the nearest centimetre).
(a) Basic question – How many boxes fit into the crate?
(b) What is the maximum volume of a toy box?
(c) What is the minimum volume of the crate?
(d) Look at your answers to (b) and (c) – do they affect your answer to (a)?

It was a simple question about fitting toy boxes into a shipping crate. It extended to looking at upper and lower bounds, then recalculating given this extra information. Simple? No chance!

Problem One
Not changing to the same units

Problem Two
Working out the two volumes and dividing to find the number of toys. When challenged on this, it took a while to get through to the basics of how many toys actually fit – mangled toys and split up boxes don’t sell well.

Problem Three
Maximising the arrangement of boxes – remainders mean empty space

Problem Four
Using the information from Problem Three to find the total number of toys

Problem Five
Working out the dimensions and volume of the empty space in the box

Problem Six
Trying to convert centimetres cubed into metres cubed. I don’t even know why they wanted too!

Problem Seven/Eight
What’s an upper/lower bound?

Problem Nine
What do you mean that the original answer changes when the box size alters?

Problem Ten
All those who weren’t paying attention when you went over Problem Two and don’t ‘get’ why the answer isn’t 625!

290. Alcoholic Percentages

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The season of gratuitous excess is upon us and the reminders about safely consuming alcohol are popping up in supermarkets … usually next to the massive bottle of brandy, which are on special offer! We educators are counting the days to the holiday break.

But wait!

Keep your eyes peeled for all the alcohol awareness promotions. My local supermarket had information leaflets and these goodies:

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Forget doing percentages about sale prices. How about working out the volume of alcohol in different beverages? Finding out how easy it could be to exceed the recommended intake? A bit of education of the effects of alcohol in a cross curricular lesson?

Now how much brandy soaked Christmas cake is equivalent to one unit of alcohol?

289. The secret formula for success

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You may remember this advert for Frosties cereal (US Frosted Flakes) from your childhood. If you do you’ve been around as long as me:

What was Tony’s secret formula? We never found out!

Enough reminiscing I hear you cry! How does this help anyone?

Well, in the new GCSE exam specifications the formulae sheets have gone. Specific formulae may be given in an individual question, but due to the lack of a working crystal ball we don’t know the frequency with which this will happen. To help with this I have typed up the Edexcel formulae into a PowerPoint. You can print it out and put it around the room, you could have a formula of the week, you could leave a slideshow running while students work, you could even print it small on card and make a pack of flashcards. Mine are laminated and hanging from a washing line, I’m going to move them around so that students have a varied view.

Whatever you do, increased familiarity improves retention – just think back to the posters you regularly saw as a child. I have made different versions for different situations – Edexcel vs no exam board, white background vs pale blue background, pdf vs pptx. Download whichever version you need:

Edexcel No Formulae Sheet blue (pptx)

Edexcel No Formulae sheet wihite (pptx)

Edexcel No Formulae Sheet blue (pdf)

Edexcel No Formulae Sheet white (pdf)

GCSE No Formulae Sheet blue (pptx)

GCSE No Formulae Sheet white (pptx)

GCSE No Formulae Sheet blue (pdf)

GCSE No Formulae Sheet white (pdf)