59 starters (so far)

A month ago, whilst doing my regular resource reviews on the TES, I came across a resource that was that good I felt the need to blog about it...it's been a while since I had that thought, but now (having found a few minutes between planning lessons for going back to school tomorrow) I'm ready to do so.

The resource is from Richard Tock (@TickTockMaths) (tes username: richardtock) and is quite simply a jam packed ppt with loads of starters for your Mathematics lessons.

You can download the resource from the TES here --> http://goo.gl/aoFVYR

The ppt includes random number/letter generators, you can randomly choose a starter task, you can assign your own favourite starter tasks on the menu screen by dragging the relevant numbered starter into the 'drag favourites here' section and much much more.

Here's the main menu...

 
As you can see the starter tasks are all differentiated by the colour coding that has been assigned to each task (key in top right of screen). By clicking on the 'pick one randomly' you can get a random starter task (make sure you enable macros when the ppt opens).






Some of my favourite starter tasks from the '59 starters' resource:

Starter #1 - what is special about this grid? I won't spoil this by revealing the answer, check it out yourself!
It'd be interesting to see what students would come up with here, and how they would go about trying to find the 'specialness' of the grid!

Starter #29 - bananas. Very good for literacy links. It is also very generic which allows it to be used as the starter in almost any lesson/subject. This could be adapted for all subjects, and even keep 'a mathematical word' to get a bit of numeracy in other subjects.

Starter #14 - What is the question? I like these tasks, especially as you can create any question to which the answer is on the screen, for almost any topic too. Click the number in the centre of the screen to randomly generate another!

Starter #33 - 4 pics 1 word. I created some of these last year, check them out by viewing my blog post at --> http://goo.gl/wx0uBR & download them from the TES by clicking --> http://goo.gl/vWkZCP.

Starter #59 - What is the best number? Why? This links to the YouTube video clip of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory explaining what the actual best number is. Cue debate from your students!





I also like all the Dara O'Briain's School of Hard Sums questions as I have seen, and shown these episodes in class on a few occasions. Some of the questions are quite tricky, but fear not...Richard Tock has included all the answers!

So, download this resource and it will essentially cover your starters for your lessons if you are struggling to find inspiration, or anything to specifically link in to your main lesson's topic/theme. The tasks I have tried out with students so far have gone down really well and it allows you to get lessons off to a quick start by having something to think about on the board as students arrive, you collect h/w in etc etc.

Thanks to Richard Tock for uploading this resource to the TES and making it available to everyone!

Year 6 Problem Solving Day

Right in the middle of the first half term of the school year I helped host, and organise, a Year 6 Problem Solving Day for my school's local primary schools. In all, we invited 6 of our local primaries and each brought with them 4 students and 1 member of staff. The day ran fantastically well with all schools feeding back positively on the day and in the subsequent online survey that I sent round. However, without the help and support of our mathematics faculty assistant and my fellow Mathematics teachers the day wouldn't have even gone ahead.

The only downside to running events such as these is the amount of organisation and planning the day takes. For this event we had to (in no particular order):

contact our local primaries, get the names of the students/staff attending
send out details of the day a week before the day itself
book the school's study centre to host the event
enlist the help of our Year 9 prefects to support the Year 6 students on the day
advertise the event in our school's bulletin/the website and in staff briefings
print and write certificates for each student who attended/prefect that supported the event
print out answer booklets for each primary school to use on the day
print off name badges for all involved
arrange parking spaces for the primary school's minibuses
arrange refreshments for our visitors
get a member of SLT to come and award the certificates at the end of the day
ensure everyone knew of fire and safety procedures should we have to use them
seek permission for use of photographs for the school's website
plan all the activities for the day
plan cover for the lessons my colleague and I missed due to running the day...

...and I'm sure there are loads more things that our faculty assistant did behind the scenes that I am unaware of!

However, despite the mammoth task of planning the event (and the time it took up) it was well worth while. I planned all the activities and I used resources I had found on the TES or from tweets that I had seen.
On the day itself the activities were arranged in 6 different bases, each with a different activity. Our primary schools then rotated round the bases in a carousel of activities type style. The schools had 20 minutes to attempt the activity at each base, they wrote down their answer in their answer booklets, reset the activity to how they found it and then advanced to the next base. Each school therefore got to attempt each activity and the results were collated at the end and points awarded for the successful completion of each task.
Each student was then awarded with their certificate at the end of the day and the winners were then announced.

The activities (with all links to the resources used) are listed below, with a brief description of each activity and how/where I found them...

The Factors and Multiples Puzzle
http://nrich.maths.org/5448 @nrichmaths

The Factors and Multiples Puzzle, from the nrich website is one that I have used in class before and set students as a homework task. Each time the students, regardless of age, have found the puzzle challenging and only a few have been able to complete it. The answer (seen in the picture inserted to the left) was uploaded to Twitter by @SmileMaths and they reminded me of the activity when i was looking for inspiration on my Twitter time line. Only 1 school managed to complete the puzzle in the 20 minutes allowed. For this 'base' I took a photo of each teams completed (or partially completed) puzzle and then worked out how many points to award based on the numbers being in the correct row/column. A total of 25 points available!



The Marshmallow Challenge
http://marshmallowchallenge.com/Welcome.html

The Marshmallow Challenge was the most popular 'base' of the day and was an idea I saw tweeted by @ArcherEdTech. The picture to the left was the laminated instructions I gave to the students arriving at the base. I had a lot of our Year 9 students positioned on this base to help measure and cut out 1m of string and tape and to ensure the structure was freestanding at the end of the 20 minutes with the marshmallow on the top. The height was recorded. The winning height was awarded 5 points, 2nd 3 points and 3rd 1 point.

 

Lost Labels
http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/The-Lost-Labels-6292871/
RSS Centre for Statistical Education

A resource I found on the TES whilst doing my usual resource reviews. When I was planning the activities for the day I wanted to get a mixture of activities that covered the 4 main areas of Mathematics (number, algebra, shape space and measure and data handling). However, the algebra activity was left out as the Year 6 students may not have come across much of this as of yet in their learning of Mathematics. N.B. the day was for any Year 6 student, not necessarily those that were 'gifted and talented' in Mathematics. So, the lost labels task asked students to complete the labels on the axes of a couple of bar charts, just based on a few clues. I like how this task leads to a lot of interpretation of bar charts, decisions as to the scale of the axes etc. 5 points were awarded for each successfully labelled bar chart (10 points on offer here in total)

Murder Mystery
http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Murder-Mystery-Maths-3-6305825/

Another resource I found on the TES when doing my resource reviews and when looking for end of term activities at the end of last year. Now, this task was the only one where we had any sort of EBI feedback on. The activity just took too long and therefore not all schools were able to give an answer to this one and had to 'guess' based on the amount they were able to complete. So, in future, if I were to use these sorts of activities again, I would ensure that the activity was completed over 2 bases and therefore allowed more time. Nonetheless, I still think this is a fantastic resource, that I have used with Y7-10 students at the end of term. The task, in an hour lesson, has taken anywhere from 10-60 minutes depending on the ability of the group and the number of students in each group. I think I was hoping that with each school having 4 students and 1 member of staff that if each took one 'clue' and answered it that they'd be able to do it in the time allowed. I may have underestimated this a bit?!

Triangles Mystery
http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/triangle-mysteries/?_r=0

Another idea/activity I saw on my Twitter time line over the Summer, this time tweeted out by @stevenstrogatz. What I really liked about this activity is that it was in the New York Times and this, for me, gave the puzzle a certain gravitas that I feel the students/staff appreciated as they saw it as a puzzle that was trying to be solved elsewhere in the world, and not something I had just thought up/found for them alone. There is more that can be done with this task rather than just the simple nature that I presented it due to the 20 minutes allowed.

It could form the basis of a mathematical investigation to give to students in KS3?

 

Mathematical Treasure Hunt
Smile Cards http://www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/elibrary/collection/45/smile-cards-by-number

The final activity that I included was one that had been used in the Year 6 Problem Solving Days done in years past. The day had previously been run by a colleague who retired at the end of last school year. I worked with her when working as a cover supervisor and she helped me loads in terms of allowing me to observe her lessons, help plan and run revision sessions for year 11s and I now teach in the room she vacated. I owe a lot to her in terms of my own development and felt that it was important that the day still had something of hers in it. She had left behind her boxes of resources that she used on the problem solving days (there's a year 2 one coming up later in the year) and from these I searched through and used the 'base' numbers she had on each table, the answer booklets and of course, this resource. The resource itself was one from the SMILE cards series, involving students going on a mathematical treasure hunt around the study centre, finding cards with mathematical problems and then finding the card with the answer to that problem on before attempting the problem on that card. The students wrote down the path between the cards and then were awarded points on the correct answer/path. The students enjoyed searching round the study centre for the clues and some of the year 9 prefects helped locate those that I put in obscure places.

In preparing the day I created this ppt with all the resources/instructions etc I needed to print/laminate for the day. If you would like to use them just click the link below (and of course the links above).

My resources --> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37694946/Y6%20Problem%20Solving%20Resources.pptx


As I have said above, the day was a great success. The day ran smoothly, mainly due to the organisation that had gone before it (especially on behalf of our faculty assistant). I was a bit nervy at the start of the day that everyone would turn up and the day itself would go to plan. These worries soon disappeared and the best part of the day was seeing the students attempting the puzzles, asking questions, posing questions to questions asked, talking to staff from our primary schools and enjoying the solving of the problems that were set. There was a definite 'buzz' around the study centre that morning and all students were fully engaged in trying to solve the puzzles/problems given to them. The day ran on time, awards were handed out by one of our SLT members and the winning school took home with them the remaining bag of marshmallows that weren't used in the challenge! They were thrilled!

Since the day itself one of my colleagues has held a meeting with all our local primary schools and the feedback he got on the day was great. He said that staff that didn't even attend the Problem Solving Day were speaking very highly of it due to the fact that the year 6 students that had been on the day went back to their respective schools and were clearly telling their other teachers all about it. This is not only fantastic news for those of us that helped run and organise the day, but also for our school as it puts out a very positive message about the school. We have now had requests for similar days to be run in the future, in addition to the year 6 and year 2 problem solving days we already put on. So, hopefully, it is something we can look to offer on a more regular basis, in different disguises, for other year groups in our primaries, or for groups of students that are enthusiastic about Mathematics.

I, despite the panic and stress of ensuring everything was prepared for the day, thoroughly enjoyed the event and would recommend running a similar event to anyone that is thinking about doing so. I like liaising with our primary schools, the chance to speak to the students who could well be coming to our school in September 2014 and the opportunity to do something 'different' for a few days in the school calendar.

Many thanks again to our faculty assistant (she knows who she is), my colleagues that helped run the day and those that came down (in their free periods) to see what was going on. To the year 9 prefects for supporting and of course to all the year 6 students and their teachers for attending and making the day as good as I could have hoped.

180!

Back in June I came across the following resource on the TES...

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Darts-Project-number-and-geometry-project-6323154/

The resource is a Darts project that gets students to practise their use of compasses to construct their own dartboard. This, however, is only the 1st part of the resource. The second part includes a set of 8 'challenge cards' that get students to answer questions based on the possible scores you can throw in darts. The challenge cards are differentiated and levelled starting at asking what scores you would get if you threw, say, a single 8, double 7 and treble 6 up to the highest level challenge cards which ask students to work out how many ways they can achieve a certain score with 1, 2 or 3 darts. The higher challenges require a lot of thinking and workings, which makes these challenges great for seeing how students approach a task, whether they are able to work systematically and present their findings.

As part of the resource the uploader (chk242) has included a lesson plan, the powerpoint with the challenge cards on it, assessment sheets and a link to his blog post, which you can also view below...

http://mathematicalmagpie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/bullseye-mathematics-of-dartboard.html

Naturally, as soon as I saw the resource I had to go and get myself a dart board and get started with the 'project' straight away. I used the end of term lessons to trial out the project.

Here's the dart board I got...

I was originally looking for a magnetic one as suggested in the blog post above, but when I saw the selection on offer at Toys 'R' Us in Croydon and saw this one I decided to go with this - it has that 'ping' noise when the darts hit the board, and I like that!

It only cost £12.99











The board is a magnet to the kids as soon as they see it. They want to know what it's for, whether they're going to play darts, if it's mine etc etc. It acts as a good visual aid for students when creating their dartboards using their compasses. The only downside to the one I have is that there is no bull/bull's eye, just the one 'bull'.

I found that it took most students a lesson and a half to complete their dartboards, after having introduced the project, used the mymaths lesson as the 'starter' activity and then set the class off on drawing their circles etc. It shows how weak some students can be with using a pair of compasses (and also that half the compasses I had to work with were far too loose to be used effectively). We were able to discuss how big each of the sectors had to be using angle facts we had learnt previously which was a nice 'stopping point' in the lesson when a few students had got to the point where they were ready to draw the sectors.
The challenge cards then took anything from a lesson and a half to 3 lessons depending on how much time you have to give to the project, and how long your students stay with it. Some of my students were really interested in finding all possible ways of making certain numbers using the darts and would happily have worked through each of the challenge cards if given the chance.

In addition to the challenge cards, and creating the dart boards I used my dartboard to have a class challenge to see who could get the highest '3 dart score', much like in the blog post above. This introduced a nice 'sideline' to the main tasks and my classes got quite competitive with this. I also used the board in a few of my 'last lessons' of the year to play other dart based games such as 501, 301 (when time permitted a shorter game) and 'Killer'.

I also found, that whilst the board was at the back of my room, I could use it to settle conflicts in the classroom or to use it as a reward for those that finished tasks. It's great for choosing a set number of questions students have to answer too, although this can go both ways depending on how good you are at darts/who you allow to through the 'dart of decisiveness'!

A lot of fun can be had with the 'project' and the dart board in general. I plan to have the board put up in my new classroom ready for next year (with the darts hidden out of sight until I need them).

The board was also used in my school's Open Evening. I had one of my top set year 9 students help me out with the board and we had a 'who could get the highest 3 dart score' competition on the night with (potential) students, their parents and their brothers/sisters all trying to get the highest score. The mental maths involved in adding their 3 darts was quite challenging for some of the younger students (and some of the parents too) and it created a great 'buzz' about the room we were in.

Thanks once again to chk242 for uploading this resource.

Balloons and #poundlandpedagogy

As part of my experimentation with #poundlandpedagogy I had bought some balloons to use in class. Now, last year, for one of my formally observed lessons on my GTP, I used balloons to hide 'clues' in for the project-based lesson we were doing. This year I decided to use the balloons to pose questions to the class to try and answer throughout their lesson.

On each of 7 or 8 balloons I wrote a question, the session below involved quadratic sequences, and in the balloon (prior to blowing them up) I placed the answer to the question on a piece of paper. The idea was, throughout the lesson, where we looked at quadratic sequences, if a student felt they could answer the question on any of the balloons they would let themselves be known and I would come and check their workings. If and when they did this they would then be allowed to come and pop (very carefully) the balloon they had answered with the magic balloon popperer (a compass). Out would fall the answer to that balloon's question and they would then win a prize (also got as part of #poundlandpedagogy).

Here are the balloons...

 It wasn't long on entering the class that my students immediately asked what the balloons were for.

The questions they had to answer were those that were only possible having learnt what they did in the main part of the lesson (unless, like one of my students, they clearly had some prior knowledge of quadratic sequences...he popped a few). This meant that the attention I got from the students was even greater than usual, with them all craving the knowledge to be able to answer the balloon questions and pop them to reveal if they were correct. I only checked their answers initially to ensure I didn't have 7-8 popped balloons with no correct answers.

It is definitely something that I will look to do again. It creates a great amount of intrigue, motivation and desire in the students. It also brings a great competitive element to the lesson to see who can be first to answer each question/pop a balloon.

I also used the string I bought as part of #poundlandpedagogy to hang them up next to the board!

Deal or No Deal Revision - refined

A couple of years a go I (with the help of Miss Moore) created my 'Deal or no Deal' boxes that I have used in class when exam season hits.
I first used the boxes back when I was a Cover Supervisor and volunteered to run a revision session in the Easter Holidays as part of the school's intervention programme for the GCSEs. You can see this on my old 'GTP reflective journal' blog at http://mrcollinsreflectivejournal.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/revision-deal-or-no-deal-stylie.html

Now, I believe that I do revision lessons pretty well. I am able to find fun and engaging ways to do revision that my classes enjoy and learn from. One of these is my 'Deal or No Deal' revision session.

This year I decided to tweak the session from what I had done previously to make it even better than it had been. This was based on a conversation I had with my HoD about how it could be made better. We had run a joint revision lesson for our year 8 classes earlier in the year before their 'mid-term assessment' and we spoke about a few things that could be improved...

Before I had used SMARTboard and SMARTnotebook I was using a powerpoint file to have the 'Deal or No Deal' board on that I would update as the game was going on. This took time and stopped the session at points to do the all needed updating of the board. So, now that I had SMART to work with I created a board on SMARTnotebook that would allow me to easily swipe away the amounts. Not only this, I also put a question under each amount so that as it was swiped away a question would be revealed that the class would then all have a go at answering, rewards given to those with the correct answer. This made the game a bit more about revision than just opening boxes. Here's how the main 'board' looks like on screen...

 

Whilst the game is going on these questions aren't the only ones the students get to answer. In each player's box there is a question to answer once they (and their box) have been selected in the game. I also give each student a worksheet of 10-20 questions to be answering throughout and after the game has finished. This is how my most recent one looked...

 

 

These questions are then marked and gone through after the game has finished to check understanding and provide more of a particular question where necessary. The 'game' part of the lesson/session only takes up to 40 minutes to do. This leaves the rest of the session/lesson to go through the questions the students have to do throughout the game and those that are in their boxes. All the questions in the boxes are past exam questions too.

 

I feel the revision session using the above format not only engages my students, especially when they see the room set up in two aisles and with the red boxes on top, but it also gets them to answer more questions than they perhaps would if I had just given them a past paper and told them to get on with it. They discuss answers a lot more, work together to try and get the 250,000 prize box, which they are rewarded by accordingly throughout the continuous 'banker' offers - I always get a guest teacher to come and be the banker! I use my 'random box generator' to chose a box at the start of the lesson so all students have a fair chance of 'playing' the game. All other students are manning the boxes on their own or in pairs depending on numbers of students (I only have 20 boxes).

 

ifaketext.com

A couple of months ago I came across the following website... www.ifaketext.com. The site allows you to create your own text messages.

There are loads of ways you could use this site to create text messages that are then saved as images you can use in class. One way I have used the site so far is to create some 'I think of a number' conversations between my celebrity 'friends' and I!

Here's a few that I have made so far using the site...

 I used these images as a starter task for my students to answer whilst I was setting up the rest of the lesson and performing the admin type tasks needed.

My students soon pointed out that my network kept changing and so they couldn't be real! I apparently also got the conversation parts the wrong way round...easily fixed!

So, it wasn't long before my claim that these were texts sent from my actual friends was found out to be a lie.


I think these images are a great way to 'hook' students into a lesson. They look great, create a lot of intrigue and get them thinking/working straight away.

As suggested above I can see these being used in English loads when looking for dialect of two characters. Perhaps, taking a conversation from students' texts and putting them into text messages would help students identify with them better?

They can also be used to pose questions as a starter task. Maybe a plenary task in here too where they'd have to respond to questions asked in the message.

All of these can be set up and modified by you. You get to choose the name of the recipient/sender, your network (keep this the same otherwise you'll be found out too; if you're trying to convince a class they're real of course) and of course the content of the message/s.

There is also a www.ifakesiri.com

Flow

I must have three unfinished blogposts to get through, but this is what I keep coming back to this week.

Natasha Lewis Harrington is a doctoral psychology student who writes about my favorite game (Magic: the Gathering) in her spare time. Sometimes she crosses the stream to great effect. Like this week, when she wrote about why this game is so good at encouraging creativity among players. It's applying the work of (let me copy and paste here) Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi (specifically Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention [Google book preview]) to the question of how can we learn to engage more. I think it's well readable by non-Magic players, so please do peruse.

Here's the quick take:

(The little bit of art is from Flickr, Paolo Colacino who does what he calls generative art. Quite neat.)

Csikzentmihalyi has a TED talk about leaving boredom:


Why is this gripping me so? Because of the divide between math as taught and math as it could be.

Math, as it is often taught, violates all three of these principles. (1) We tell you the problems to do, (3) we insist on solo mastery and uniformity of method.

Wait, that's only two.

I'm wondering if I have, in my need to change (1) and (3), more than occasionally neglected (2). Is that the procedural knowledge which I de-emphasize?  I usually do that in an attempt to get the pendulum swinging in the other direction, but in doing so am I denying needed support?

Maybe not. Maybe Learning the System in mathematics is not the procedural stuff. Maybe it's the processes, hidden behind the procedural emphasis. (The processes now appearing with their new band, the Standards for Mathematical Practice.)

Of course, there's hope. Teachers like Fawn Nguyen, Michael Pershan and Andrew Stadel are knocking this engagement issue out of the park on all three principles.

But, as Dave Coffey has cautioned, and convinced me, we need to teach our students to take control of their own engagement. So when they leave Jim Pai's classroom, they can be engaged the next year, too.

That's empowerment, and that's what I want for my students.

Crazy Talk!

On Thursday 2nd May #ukedchat held its' second #TeachTweet - a take on the #TeachMeet phenomenon whereby Twitter users sign up to present a video of something they have used in their lessons etc. One thing that stood out for me in this session was 'Crazy Talk'. Software that allows you to take any image and make it come to life with your own audio.



'Crazy Talk' was mentioned in @SheliBB's presentation, which can be seen here http://www.screenr.com/GhQ7.

After seeing @SheliBB's presentation I looked up the software and have downloaded the latest edition (free). I believe I'm in some sort of 15-day trial at the moment, as to what happens after that I'll find out soon. I'm assuming there's a paid subscription to the software, but think there is a 'standard' free version too - as to what this allows you to do I'm not sure. So, as you can tell I'm very much in the early phases of messing about with this.

So, here's what I created...

For my Y10 lesson on simultaneous equations I had previously used (last year) a starter involving finding values for optimus prime and bumblebee images. So, I thought, how about I get Optimus Prime himself to introduce the starter task to the class. I found an image off of Google Images and then followed the simple instructions on the 'Crazy Talk' software to record by own audio of Optimus and then downloaded it as a wmv file. I then wanted to import this into my SMART notebook slides. However, you can (to my knowledge) only import swf files. So i used Zamzar to convert the file, which then imported easily.

The 'Crazy Talk!' Optimus Prime video I created is below to see...

 

You can also see below a print screen of my starter slide with the video imported...



My Year 10 class had a mixture of responses to this...some of them thought it was hilarious, some of the 'too cool for school' kids thought it was a bit lame and then, when they realised it was my voice, they probably thought I was a bit 'lame' too! I did give out a 'you may find this amazing, you may think it's a bit ridiculous' message prior to showing it and I did have to use a bit of self-deprecating humour here! :) Nonetheless I think it went down well on the whole and would definitely work better with the lower year groups. It made the class smile and introduced the starter in a way that, in the future, could help me do certain 'admin' based tasks whilst the class are being introduced the task. For example, next time I create one of these (and there will be a next time) I will set it up so there is a delay in the message starting after I have started it so it can be 'live' on the IWB, moving etc, as the class enter and then I can hand out books, take the register etc as they are working on the starter task.

It'd be great to hear how others have used this in their class and to what effect. Let me know!

#poundlandpedagogy Eggs!

These have been on my 'wish list' ever since I read some tweets from other #poundlandpedagogy teachers on Twitter. I can specifically remember a tweet from @WallaceIsabella.

However, my recent trips to 'Pound World' (see http://poundworld.net) have been unsuccessful in finding these. So, in a desire to get some of these I searched on the web and found them just as cheap on Ebay and then on the following website http://www.littlecraftybugs.co.uk/index.asp.
They arrived this week!

I got 72 of them so I can use different sets for different classes...

After snipping the bit of plastic holding each half together, and filing the sharp bits off they are now ready to use in class tomorrow. Here's what I plan on doing with them...









As a starter for my bottom set year 10 class I have cut up sets of 4 different numbers and put these in each of 12 eggs (1 for each student + a few spare). At the start of the lesson I will get students to pick an egg from a box and then get them to do the following with their 4 numbers:

1) using any mathematical operation, and each of the numbers once only, make the number 24
2) arrange the numbers to make the largest number possible
3) arrange the 4 numbers in any way you like and then write that number in words
4) find the largest sum you can from adding 2 of the numbers to the other 2 numbers (this was a question that they got wrong in their recent foundation mock examination)

So, for the number in the picture on the left...

1) (8-4)x(4+2)
2) 8442
3) 4842 = four thousand eight hundred and forty two
4) 84 + 42 = 126 or 82 + 44 = 126












Then, for my second set year 10s, who have been doing trigonometry the past few lessons, they have a trig question each in their eggs where they will have to find a missing length of a right-angled triangle. After they have found their own missing length I will get them to peer assess with their partner to check their partners work and have theirs checked before we then go onto looking at finding a missing angle!

 Pick an egg...any egg

10 ticks trigonometry w/sheet cut up into individual questions (1 in each egg).
I'll also be putting the 4 numbers in the eggs too for them to try and make the number 24 as with the year 10 class above. I may also get them to multiply 2 2-digit numbers from their 4 too.







I'm looking forward to seeing the reaction of the students tomorrow when they are presented with these at the start of the lesson.

I have lots of other ideas as to how I can use these in class too which I'll post about as and when I use them in class!

Tessellations

Continuing my experimentation with #poundlandpedagogy I was looking for a more practical way of using my 'Memo Cube' than just using them as pieces of paper to write notes on. I'd used them in tutor time as scrap pieces of paper to jot down our word of the week examples on, or the numeracy puzzles we do, but wanted to find a 'better' use for them.

So, I decided to use them in a tessellations lesson with my Year 10 set 5 class, using a lesson that @kutrahmoore had previously done.

Before getting into the main activity (using the 'Memo Cube' notes) I introduced the topic of tessellations and referred to the class' previous learning on interior and exterior angles of polygons using this resource that I found on the TES. After briefly going over why the 3 main shapes (square, equilateral triangle and regular hexagon) tessellate I gave the class the w/sheet (slide 12) to complete. The questions on this sheet are very similar to those that come up in the examination papers and so I saw this as good practice for the class. I then advanced through the rest of the slides showing to the class how they can make their own tessellations and how MC Escher created his famous artworks. The class particularly liked how the tessellations were formed and then created and the prepared ppt that you can download above is very well presented to show these.

Then, I introduced the class to how they were going to create their own tessellations. This was where @kutrahmoore's activity came in.

The class were given a couple of the 'Memo Cube' notes and were asked to draw a line from the top of the note to the bottom. It could be any sort of line they liked, straight, 'zigzag', wobbly etc. Then they were asked to draw a line from the left hand side of the note to the right hand side in a similar fashion. This then split their piece of paper into 4 sections.
They then had to number the 4 original corners of the square (from left to right, top to bottom, 1, 2, 3 and 4).

They then had something that looked like...(here's the one I used to model the activity to the class)...

After the class had drawn the 2 lines, and numbered the corners 1-4 they were then asked to cut out their 4 sections. This can be seen in the bottom of the 3 images here.


These 4 sections needed to then be rearranged as per the slide shown below...

This then creates the shape the students then use for their tessellations. Once stuck together, front and back, it will look something like...

 All they needed to do next was to draw around their shape onto a piece of A3 paper and then keep going to create their tessellations.

Some of the work that was produced was fantastic! We didn't quite have enough time for the majority of students to fill their pieces of A3 paper and then colour them in appropriately to then put up on display. So, they'll continue with them next lesson.









Here's an idea of what they managed to create as the lesson progressed...

 

Maths Vegas! (Negative Numbers)

Today my students and I went to 'Maths Vegas'!

In a series of lessons we have had on looking at negative numbers, adding and subtracting them and multiplying/dividing with negatives etc I found this resource on the TES that I thought would work perfectly to see how much the class had learnt, and what we needed to do more work on!

At the start of the lesson, before we started the 'Maths Vegas' activity I got the class to do a little starter activity that @reflectivemaths had come up with after a conversation with @ASTsupportAAli - a spin on the traditional 'Noughts and Crosses' game.
Continuning my experimentation with #poundlandpedagogy the class were given a bunch of my coloured square pieces of paper (Memo Cube) that I got from 'Pound World' to work on and in pairs they played the game - to see more info on the game see @reflectivemath's blog post here.

I used the time the class were playing the 'Noughts and Crosses' game to set up a table on the board that would be used for the main activity - 'Maths Vegas'. I went round each group and gave them the equipment they'd need and asked each for a suitable team name for the lesson.
Each group then had a mini whiteboard, marker and a visual representation of £50 that they would use in the activity.

Each group had the following equipment to use in the lesson.

As I was going round the class getting team names and giving out equipment the 'buzz' about what was going to happen started to generate. I was putting team names on the board 1 by 1 and so the other groups were naturally drawn towards these and what other groups were calling themselves. I then added to one of the groups an extra £10 to use in the lesson before anything had started. This naturally drew a few questions as to why one group had all of a sudden got more money to use when we hadn't even started!

As I addressed the class to explain the activity I immediately had a hand-up...'Why have they got more money sir?' The answer was simple, that group were the only group to have chosen a Mathematically themed team name for their group... 'Rhombus'. At this point, and as I was giving the reason, brilliantly, a few of the class kinda of said (as I was saying it) 'because it's a mathematical name'. Clearly I'd awarded extra points for this in the past! :)

I then explained that the activity would work as follows:

Each team had £50 (or in the case of 'Rhombus' £60) to 'play' with throughout the lesson.
They would be given a question to which they had to place a 'stake' on. They could place a minimum of £1 and a maximum of £10 on each question.
If as a group they then answered the question correctly their stake got added to their amount, if they got the question wrong the 'stake' was taken off their amount. So, if starting with £50 and placing £10 on the 1st question they'd have £60 if correct and £40 if they got it wrong.
The class were given 30 seconds on each question, after seeing the topic of the question (see resource) to decide on their stake.
The class were given 1 minute to answer each question once revealed.
The class had to hold up their whiteboards, with the answers on, at the same time to avoid any group/s writing down the answers of others.

Before then starting the activity, and taking each group's 1st stake I asked each group to assign certain roles. They needed one person to be the person who writes the group's answer on the whiteboard, one person to assign the 'stake' for each round, one person to agree on the group's final answer and the rest of the group would help work out the answers in each 'round'.

As the activity started there was a good 'buzz' about the classroom, each group engaged in trying to answer the questions. The groups worked well with one another and the competitive element behind how much each group was 'staking' on each question and therefore how much each group could have at the end of each round was fantastic. At points, the class got too excitable and so I decided to take off money for those groups that I had to wait for for far too long. This stopped some low level disruption and allowed us to move on through the questions much quicker than we were initially.

At the end of the 8 'rounds' we managed to get through I put the groups final scores on the board. These were determined by the amount of money they had gained/lost throughout the lesson. Every team lost money, which from an ethical 'gambling' point was what I wanted. At this point I used this fact to emphasise the problems with placing 'bets' and 'stakes' etc and made it clear that it was not something that I was trying to encourage, but educating them on instead.
The group that then 'won' at 'Maths Vegas' was the group that lost the least amount of money - happily, this was the group dubbed 'Arsenal'! :)
I also then gave some VIVOs (rewards) to those teams that didn't pick up any fines throughout the lesson.

Here's how the table looked at the end of the lesson...

You'll see the 'Thoughts on Crosses' activity examples I gave on the left. The main 'Maths Vegas' table on the rest of the board.

I would highly recommend doing this activity and using the resource above. The resource covers adding and subtracting negatives, ordering negative numbers (and finding the median of them), multiplying with negatives, dividing with negatives, magic squares with negative numbers, negative coordinates and more!

Circle Theorems & Hula Hoops!!

Inspired by @MrReddyMaths' guest blog post by @adrianjohnst on his blog my Y10 class have been creating Circle Theorems using Hula Hoops bought at 'Pound World' today!!

To see Adrian's blog post click http://mrreddy.com/blog/2012/12/guest-blog-circle-theorems-and-hula-hoops/

To visit the 'Pound World' website go to http://poundworld.net/. This lesson/blog post is part of my experimentation with #poundlandpedagogy.

This was our 1st lesson back after the Easter holidays and with a few personnel changes to the set due to recent mock results I felt it would be a good idea to revise over a few topics this week to get the class back into the swing of things and to provide links to the topics in the Unit 2 paper that we still need to cover. Another reason for looking at Circle Theorems again is because I didn't feel the class learnt enough when we covered them the first time round, the lesson, for whatever reason, didn't seem to sink in and so we needed to do more work here - the question/s that have come up in mock papers the class have done weren't fantastically well answered, as a whole group.

So, I started the lesson by using my Mathematics 4 pics 1 word Circle Theorems resource - see my previous blog post http://mrcollinsmaths.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/mathematics-4-pics-1-word-circle.html (there's a link in this post to my resource on the TES available for download). I then, using the words in the starter activity went over the circle theorems on the board. I also had, on the tables prior to the class coming in, a sheet of QR Codes that linked to my Circle Theorem videos on my YouTube Channel (mrcollinsmaths). The idea then was for the class to use the videos and the notes I had written on the board to recreate one of the Circle Theorems. I asked groups to volunteer for a particular circle theorem at this point and this created a bit of competition with certain groups wanting to do certain Theorems over others. Once the groups had their circle theorems assigned I showed them (in the style of 'Blue Peter') one I had made early to model what it was I was expecting. Having thought about it now, I should have shown them Mr Reddy's blog post (darn hindsight)!

So, here's one I made earlier...

I used a few of my other purchases at 'Pound World' including the 'Memo Cube' 'post-its' (however these aren't sticky) and the masking tape to secure the rods.

The rods I got from our awesome D&T department. I luckily caught one of the NQT teachers in the car park and told him what I was planning to do - we then went to the D&T workshops and sliced up some wooden rods they had lying around so I could use these as the tangents, chords, radii, diameters etc! These were a great help and it pays to know all the departments in your school - you never know when you're going to need to call on them for help!

This 'model' then gave the class the basis of what I was looking for. After a short health and safety warning about splinters I gave the groups their hula hoop, wooden rods and sellotape/masking tape etc. At this point I had quite a few of our faculty in the room as I had invited them in if they were free to see what we were doing (and give me a hand). A few of them went and found us some extra sellotape as the masking tape wasn't great for holding the parts in place. Nonetheless, look what the class created...

 Angles drawn from the same point

 Angles drawn from the same chord

Angle in a semi-circle (angle at the circumference is half the angle at the centre)

 Cyclic Quadrilateral (opposite angles = 180 degrees)

Angle at the circumference is half the angle at the centre











After the class had been given 15-20 minutes to complete their circle theorem hula hoops I asked one representative from each group to explain to the rest of the class what circle theorem they had done, explain the relative parts of each etc. I then collected them all in and handed out to the class a set of circle theorem past paper questions from the 'bland.in' website. The class then used my YouTube video and all the Theorems (now on the floor of the wall at the front of the class) to answer the questions. I was particularly impressed at this point that some of the class had got our previous lessons notes out of their exercise books to refer to too!

Here's all of them at the front of the class & the QR Codes sheet and questions I gave the class...

 All of them, at the front as a reference - I just need to 'hang'/ put these up on one of the walls in the room for future use!

Here's the QR Code sheet I made the class. The centre QR Code links to the playlist on my YouTube Channel with all the explanations and some past paper question solutions. The 6 QR Codes round the centre one link to a specific theorem.







I (and I hope the class) really enjoyed this lesson. I feel they were much more secure with their knowledge of circle theorems at the end of the lesson having gone over the answers to the questions in the 'plenary'.
I know need some more Hula Hoops to do a session on Venn Diagrams (as suggested by a few of my Twitter followers following my #poundlandpedagogy tweets)!

Mathematics 4 pics 1 word - 'Intro to Algebra' & 'Polygons' starters

As promised in a previous Mathematics 4 pics 1 word post, I have now finished my 'Intro to Algebra' 4 pics 1 word starter resource and I've also done a 'Polygons' one ready for going over Interior/Exterior angles of polygons with my Y10s in the next few weeks!

Both of these resources are available on my TES resources at:

Intro to Algebra: http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Mathematics-4-pics-1-word-Intro-to-Algebra-6328592/

Polygons: http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Mathematics-4-pics-1-word-Polygons-6328726/

Here are a few examples of what's included in these 4 pics 1 word starters, first up - the Intro to Algebra one...

A nice easy one to get started, got to love the Bert & Ernie pic!

Any artists out there will get this one straight away?!

??









And here are a few examples from the 'Polygons' 4 pics 1 word starter (this one has 10 different slides in it)...

This one features 'Paul' the Octopus that predicted the World Cup results!

Bit trickier?

This will hopefully lead in to teaching about the int/ext angles of polygons!

Another one of my favourites, possibly too easy though?








You can download ALL of my Mathematics 4 pics 1 word resources on my TES resources or just by searching for 'Maths 4 pics 1 word', like this.
Alternatively, if you'd like to see all the 4 pics 1 words blog posts then click on the '4pics1word' label in the word cloud to the left of my blog page, like this.