Advent Calendar Resource

Earlier this year, in February, I found the following resource (by dannytheref [@dannytheref])...

http://goo.gl/X3oP5u

The only problem with this was that I was 2 months too late! However, having remembered the resource, I relocated it earlier this week with the intention of using it this month in the lead up to Christmas for some festive starter activities to kick off my Mathematics lessons.

If you haven't seen/used the resource before you can download it from the TES by clicking on the link above. Here's what the resource includes...

The home slide is complete with a festive jingle. You then click on the doors to reveal the starter task/activity to do.

I recommend reading the instructions and answers document that accompanies the resource to fully understand all of the different activities on offer. These could be done on a daily basis with your classes or just randomly depending on when/how much you want to use this in your lessons!

My favourites are:

The product game - the resource takes you to a website to play this
Heads or Tails - classic!
'One of these things is not like the other thing' - sung by the Cookie Monster...what's not to love!
Pointless - brilliant game
The boys vs girls head to head - the accompanying music is brilliant

I know I'll be using this in my lessons this month. If you do too let me know how the resource goes down and don't forget to leave a comment for dannytheref on his resource too!

Angry Birds Christmas Cards!

Last year, whilst on my GTP, I decided to give each of my students a Christmas Card, each with a differentiated question, just before we broke up for the Christmas holidays; I mainly did this just because it was Christmas, but also to thank them for their work that term and give them the slightest bit of revision! :) They went down really well with my classes and I had many of them coming up to me at the end of the lesson and telling me the answers to their questions, or asking me how they worked theirs out. They were also asking each other what questions they got! So I thought it worked really well and created a good basis going into the rest of the year.

So, like all good ideas, they're well worth repeating! This week (Tuesday) I gave my Year 9 class their Christmas Cards (mainly as they were the first ones I got round to writing and I only have them once this week) and once again they seemed to really like them.
This time I centred the cards around the Angry Birds. This almost happened by coincidence as when I was shopping for Christmas Cards it just so happened that the ones that took my fancy were the Angry Birds ones. The clogs then started turning in my head and I remembered the Angry Birds 3D nets that I had used and blogged about last year (all thanks to 'Little Plastic Man' for these [see previous blog post here]). Inevitably I then bought the cards and for each of my year 9s I copied the nets into a document and added some text to get them to work out the volume and surface area for their Angry Bird character, and then they could also create their Angry Bird too. This not only allows them to revise what we had covered earlier in the year on volume and surface area, but also gave them an opportunity to have a bit of fun creating their Angry Bird.
These were also nicely differentiated as the different Angry Birds 3D nets make different 3D shapes, the 'red bird' and 'pig' characters are cuboids, the 'yellow bird' a tetrahedron and the 'white bird' a trapezoid. I therefore gave the students a character that I felt best suited their ability and the cards were done.

Here's how it all looked before the cards were 'enveloped'...

I intend to do the rest of the cards (for my KS3 classes) over the weekend to hand them out next week!
I will, of course, give them different questions (perhaps worded ones based on the angry birds characters/games).

i.e. If the Angry Birds app costs 69p on the App Store and 12 people out of a class of 30 buy the app what percentage of the class bought the app?

Mathematical Advent Calendar Display

Having posted previously about the Mathematical Advent Calendar template I created last weekend (see blog post here) my Year 7 class have now completed their calendars and I have displayed some of them on one of the displays in my room.
The chosen calendars are fantastic (as were a few others, but I didn't have room for all of them) and I'm looking forward to my Year 7s seeing them up on the wall in their next lesson.

The idea seems to have gone down well with others too as my resource (uploaded on the TES) has had a fair amount of downloads in the past week. To download the template just go to this page.

Here's how the display looks...

In class, I initially got the students to cut out the doors and then stick the front template sheet to a plain piece of A4.

Then they were challenged to come up with the Mathematical clues/equations/facts/calculations etc whose answers were the numbers 1-25.

Then they were asked to swap their calendars with their partner to check whether their partner had indeed got all numbers between 1-25 represented. This was, in my opinion, the best part of the activity as they had to work out their partner's clues and therefore were revising a number of mathematical topics (and some footballers' shirt numbers) that we had covered so far this year; I gave the class a list of possible questions they could come up with prior to the task.

Finally, the class were told to fill in each door with a joke, picture, rhyme etc etc - they finished these off for homework and then brought their calenders in for their next lesson.

Mathematical Advent Calendar

December is here, which means it's advent calendar time across the country! So, in order to embrace the Christmassy nature of the month I have decided to get my Year 7 class to create their own 'Mathematical Advent Calender'.

I have created a blank advent calendar template that I will hand out to my class and then I'll get them to cut out the 'doors' on the template that I have pre-cut round some of the edges. They will then stick this template sheet onto a blank piece of A4 paper.
After the setting up of the calendar is done the class will be challenged to come up with as many mathematical problems, equations, calculations, sums etc to which the answers are the numbers between 1-25. The answers to their problems will then decide which door is numbered with which of the numbers between 1-25 and therefore what doors get opened on each day of the month, leading up to Christmas.
After the students have then written mathematical problems for each of the doors they will be given the task of filling in the inside of each door with a joke, fact, picture, cartoon, rhyme, etc  that will be revealed on each day when the doors are opened.

I have created an example to show the class where all the mathematical facts are what we have been covering so far in class this year. I will, throughout the lesson, give the students guidance as to what types of mathematical facts they can use to create the answers (numbers 1-25); we have been studying BIDMAS, sequences, expressions, substitution, area, perimeter.

*in the style of Blue Peter*...here's one I prepared earlier...

I have uploaded the template onto my TES resources page, this can be seen here - http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Mathematical-Advent-Calendar-Template-6305408/ I printed out the template sheets and then used a scalpel and cutting mat to cut out the horizontal lines of each door. This means all the students will need to do is cut the vertical line between them (right hand of each door) and then stick the sheet to another piece of A4.
Of course I could have got the students to do this but didn't particularly fancy having to borrow the scalpels from DT and allowing the kids to do this themselves!

Let me know what you think! I'm planning on putting these up on the class display after they've been finished off. My year 7s are the only one of my classes that don't currently have a display up in my room!