Monthly Archives: September 2013

136. Quiz-Its

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Here’s a simple starter/revision activity. All you need is Post-it notes.

Hand out Post-its as the class arrive.

Once they have got their things out they each write four questions on a topic of your choice. Encourage them to make the questions challenging. Once that’s done tell them they need to write the answer lightly in pencil on the back.

Stick all the Post-its on a table or wall.
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Everyone then collects a Post-it (or Qwiz-it) to answer (not their own).

Once they’ve answered, they can check their answer. If the answers don’t match, who is correct? Why?

This can lead to discussions about question-style, methods, misconceptions and understanding.

135. Book (& Website) of the week 2

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If you are on Twitter, you may have heard of the perfectly titled @MathsBookClub. If not, let me explain.

People were asked to nominate their favourite Maths related book (Fiction or Fact).

People voted and the most popular was chosen.

The winner was: ‘Alex’s Adventures in Numberland’ (‘Here’s looking at Euclid’ USA) by Alex Bellos.

Just like a “meet down the pub bookclub” there will be an online discussion on Wednesday 23rd October. Except with this bookclub, the author has offered to join in! Very cool!

To join in the mathematical literary fun either follow @MathsBookClub on twitter, visit the mathsbookclub website or do both!

(Support your local Library. If that’s not possible then click on the book for a link to the paper version on Amazon.co.uk; ebook also available)

134. Revising around in Circles

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Ah … beloved GCSE students. Why does revising feel like I’m just reteaching a topic for the Nth time?

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I’ve been trying some new ideas out on my GCSE group. One of the more popular ones ideas, for an unpopular topic, were these Circle Theorems fact cards. Students were given four cards with a diagram and an open question, for example: What is special about angles ABD and ACD? In the gap, they had to answer the question. They soon realised that the answers they had written were the theorems that they’d learnt. Their solutions had popped into their heads, without being bogged down by number stress. They could then try number questions, referring back to these fact cards if they got stuck.

133. Smart Research

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Teachers often get students to do research homework for one of two reasons: to increase independent learning and develop an inquiry mindset or as an easy homework to set/mark.

Pupils often see research homework in one of two ways: as an opportunity for independent study and to find out cool facts that no-one else will find or as ‘None set’ – the teacher won’t check it and if they do there is the excuse that the computer wasn’t working, the printer had run out of ink, the internet went down or it wasn’t their classes day to use the school library.

How can you change this mindset?

Over the years I’ve set this type of task with varying degrees of success. Conscientious pupils write/type a short essay, with diagrams if appropriate – you could put it straight on the wall to be admired. Others print out webpages or copy a couple of lines from the internet/textbook/friend. Then there is the woeful list of excuses brigade …

This time I changed one thing in the task and I was frankly amazed: 100% successful completion. The change was so simple – how it could be done.

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I asked them to research letter frequency analysis. Some wrote a page in their book, some took a photo of a page from a book, some did a printscreen and others bookmarked a website. Three of these four formats involve the use of smartphones. Unless your school has draconian rules on mobile phone use in the classroom, this is a good way to engage pupils. It promotes responsible use of technology and prompted discussions on how they’d searched to get their result.

All I had to do was walk around the room and let them show me their homework while they did the follow up task. Cynics might say that they could quickly do their homework before I got to them – this is a valid comment, except the ‘Usual Suspects’ came into the room waving their phones, desperate to show me their work!

BTW I was rather amused when one of the pupils showed me a screengrab of this blog – he didn’t have a clue that I’d written it.

132. Good question, Bad question 1

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I like a topic that you can have fun with and also relates to the big bad world outside the classroom. We are constantly asked our opinions on websites, customer feedback surveys … even personality ‘tests’ in magazines. Every day there seems to be a new set of survey results hitting the news. How can you link a lesson with life?

Instead of telling pupils about biased questionning and surveys, why not give them a week or so to make a note of how often they are asked questions? They can evidence it by taking photographs, screengrabs, cutting surveys out or writing them down.

Task
Mix up the pupils into groups and get them to focus on what the question is asking and how they are expected to answer.

Note
Be prepared for some off topic discussion if they have surveys like ‘Which member of boyband X are you most likely to marry?’ or ‘Have you got what it takes to be the next (insert sportsperson or team manager here)?’

Development
Discuss which questions are fair (unbiased) and which are leading you to a certain opinion. If there are multiple choice answers, do they cover all possible ideas? Think about who would have access to this survey (sampling/sample size).

Challenge
Imagine you work for a website, magazine or shop.
1. Design a fair survey researching opinions on a relevant topic.
2. Design a very biased survey on the same topic.
3. Carry out the surveys on the same people.
4. Compare results.
5. What impact did the bias/unbiased style have?

131. App of the Day: MyScript calculator

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A short post today. This week J introduced me to the ‘MyScript Calculator’ app.

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It’s a rather nifty app that converts freehand writing into mathematical calculations and solves them. It is available for most formats of smartphone and you can visit their website here.

These examples from the website show what it is capable of doing – I’m sure there is a lesson here somewhere.

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130. Banging your head against a y-axis

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Confession time!

I like teaching co-ordinates.

I like teaching plotting graphs.

But …..

Getting pupils to draw axes drives me up the y-axis.

 

Right now I can sense people shaking their heads – why are you doing co-ordinate plotting if they can’t draw axes?

 

The problem is that they can draw axes, but for some pupils it takes about half an hour to get lines drawn with a ruler, axes marks equally spaced, lines (not gaps) numbered. For other pupils, their particular SEN means it’s a struggle using equipment. Should I be penalising pupils because they are slow to draw axes, when I know they’ll work brilliantly if I give them axes?

 

So I’ve put together an A4 sheet of axes. There are two identical sets: the x-axis goes from 0-10, the y-axis goes from 0-18. There is also space to write name and Question number so you can keep track of who has done what. I know there are many websites that will generate these for you on demand, but I’ve just used what was available to me at the time to make something that works for my pupils.

 

You can download it from TES resources here.