If you haven’t had a chance to take part in the rather excellent ‘How to Learn Maths’ online course at Stanford University, led by Jo Boaler – don’t worry!
Get reading the rather brilliant book ‘The Elephant in the Classroom’ instead. You’ll find yourself going ‘Yes, I know what you mean!’, ‘I’d never thought of that …’ and ‘I need to try this out’, before you’ve even finished it.
My colleague Jane introduced me to ‘Tick or Trash’ worksheets and they are just brilliant!
The basic idea is you have a table with three columns. The middle column is the question, either side are the solutions of fictional pupils. I called mine Kirsty and Kyle as I don’t teach anyone with those names. One solution is correct, one isn’t. Your students must decide who is right and why. They must then decide where the other pupil went wrong.
The worksheet I’ve put together is about inequalities. It covers using a numberline, solving a linear inequality with the unknown on one/two sides and dealing with a negative. There is also a QR code linking to a short YouTube clip (not mine) on solving inequalities. Download it here. The basic colour coded answers are available too. Note: the files are in docx format.
This is an ideal activity to use with the Validator concept. I would give my peer Validator the answer sheet to refer to, but the explanations would be down to the students to gauge if they understood.
A resource for a sunny day. An editable outdoor maths scavenger hunt.
Download here.
(PS The cartoon dog is Detective Droopy)
A quick resource idea for you today:
If you are not familar with Pinterest, it’s basically a digital pinboard of images, which usually have extra information or weblinks. There is a whole channel of education ideas – you can ‘Repin’ other people’s ‘Pins’ or upload your own. You can have several pinboards that are either public or private.
Go to Pinterest to browse the public boards. There are also official smartphone apps available from the appropriate stores.
Did my Little Thinkers give you ideas for a lesson?
I hope so!
These are my little crisp people and they’ve been helping pupils learn for over a decade.
I first thought up this task when an interactive whiteboard and digital projector came in the form of an overhead projector. Using the brand new concept of colour printing onto inkjet OHP transparencies, we could move these little people around the board and investigate different problems. Each number represents the number of bags of crisps eaten in a week. Each colour represents a flavour (Blue = salt & vinegar, red = ready salted, green = cheese & onion, pink = prawn cocktail).
You can sort by number of bags eaten:
You can create a flavour pictogram:
In fact you can use this resource with KS2 & KS3 to investigate lots of topics:
Sorting by category (number/colour)
Ordering numbers
Pictograms
Venn diagrams
Carroll diagrams
Bar-charts
Averages
Questionning
Probability
And anything else you can think of.
I’ve created an editable template of figures, in three different sizes. You print them out and use them individually, in group work or on the wall. There is also a teacher guide on how to use the crisp people.
Enjoy!
Download your little people below:
Editable template crisp-people-template-blank
Teacher guide and presentation crisp_people_guide
It’s Friday, so it’s time to share another site I like. This week it’s El Timbre. Lots of lovely teaching activities and ideas waiting to be read.
Here is a little teaser for you:
What would you use these little people for?
