15. Algebra bingo

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When you are teaching simplifying, most published worksheets and textbooks contain pages of themed or mixed questions. It’s not exactly thrilling stuff.

How about a bit of friendly competition?

Equipment
You just need a set of simplifying questions with answers. Any textbook with the answers in the back would do or project the answers on the board.

Set Up
Ask each student to pick eight answers from a specified set.

Play
The teacher reads out a question. The students simplify it and circle if they have it. First player to get all eight wins.

You could repeat this, increasing the difficulty or change to a different theme eg substitution.

The nice thing about this activity is you are in control of the level of difficulty and you can adapt it as you go on. The game element is engaging and the sneaky thing is that everyone has to do every question to have a chance to win.

14. JDs Tree Diagram

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My friend JD came up with this visual way of explaining tree diagrams. I’m reproducing it here with permission (Thanks!). It helps if you have a school uniform with a tie and jumper, however this could easily be done with coats and hats.

Set Up
You need 6 volunteers, dressed as listed:
1. (No jumper, no tie) x 2
2. (No jumper, tie) x 2
3. Jumper, tie
4. Jumper, no tie

(This can be adapted for listing multiple outcomes too)

Activity
Draw a V shape on the ground.
Explain that in the morning you have choices when you get dressed. Each branch represents a choice.
Choice 1: Do you put your tie on or not?
Get a student wearing a tie to stand at the end of one branch and one without a tie to stand at the end of the other

Draw a V from each student.
Choice 2: Do you put your jumper on or not?
Get the class to decide who stands where

Discussion
If all the choices are equally likely, what is the probability of getting in trouble with your teacher over uniform?
Can you prove this by looking at the probabilities of the individual events?
What would happen if the outcomes were not equally likely?

It’s a good idea to try and take a picture of what this looks like to display in class. You could also annotate it with fractions and overall probabilities.

13. Trigonometry Snapdragon

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I wanted to boost my students’  level of understanding of trigonometry without switching off their enthusiasm. We’d investigated the tan ratio practically and introduced sin and cos.

Now the tricky bit – how to make picking and rearranging trig rules interesting!

Introducing the Trigonometry snapdragon:

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Pinch together the two things in the question eg opposite and hypotenuse.

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Look inside the snapdragon at the pinched portions. Follow the instructions eg Sin rule: know hyp, find opp or know opp, find hyp

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Unfold the appropriate section for your problem.

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You now have the correct rule, rearranged for your problem.

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Student Feedback
‘That is amazing’ and ‘Can I make one in the exam?’.

Download a digital version here: Trigonometry snapdragon v2

Also visit the updated snapdragon page for a blank template: Snapdragon fun

10. No more boring test reviews

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Tests!

They are part of the education system, but how much notice do students take when you go through the paper? If you did well, a lot of a review lesson is wasted. If you did really badly you either are struggling and don’t want to be reminded of your weaknesses or you didn’t revise and don’t care. That means you have a fair few disengaged students that lesson.

One solution that a colleague and myself developed for use with a C/B grade KS4 class is the independent open-book review.

Open-book
Give the marked test papers back and allow the students half the lesson to try the questions with their books. This addresses whether the issue is memory or understanding.

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Independent study
Make the answer scheme available to students. I put it on our school website. The students could download it onto classroom laptops or their mobile phones (paper copies could be an option). The students re-marked the new work at their own pace and reviewed their tests.

The high fliers looked at the difficult questions, the strugglers identified where they had lost easy marks. The class were engaged with their learning and asking astute questions.

And of course, letting them use smartphones in class was an instant hit. There was a lot of positive feedback from students and I’ll be doing this again.

9. Scrabble maths

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Check out this link I found on Pinterest:
Printable scrabble tiles

You could practice basic numeracy skills or even pose averages questions like find me a five letter word with a range of 3 and a median of 2 (QUOTH, 41132 is one possible solution).

tiles