Resources, musings & lesson ideas for teaching, learning & enjoying maths.
As half term is an opportunity to relax, I thought I’d do something different this week – having seen the #teacher5adaysketch challenge on Twitter, I cracked out my sketchbook and pencils to draw “my hobby”.First though, a few caveats: I don’t have one hobby; I am very very bad at doing lots of different things for …
#teacher5adaysketch – My hobbies Read More »
When I was younger, I was ridiculously cynical about Valentine’s Day – I’d wonder why people needed one special day to tell or show their significant other how much they love them, when surely that should be happening all the time. However, as I’m often working late into the evenings (I get in at 4pm …
Love is in the air! Read More »
It’s another short(ish) post today because I’m trying to make the most of my first weekend of half term and also because I’ve done something weird to one of my fingers and typing/clicking is really painful today (fortunately, this also puts paid to any idea that I’ll be marking books later). Following my post yesterday about integers, …
Today was A Level taster day, so I spent the afternoon teaching budding mathematicians/further mathematicians about calculus and complex numbers (respectively), and today’s etymology post is all about A Level vocabulary.Calculus is a good place to start. It’s based on infinitesimals, so the original meaning of the word calculus – a little pebble used for counting – kind …
Romanes eunt domus? Read More »
While revising the equation and graph of a straight line today with Year 10, I mentioned the general form y = mx + c, mostly because that’s what appears in many of the revision guides and textbooks. For my part, I’m happy as long as they can distinguish between the gradient and y-intercept and can …
On my way to work this morning, while stopped at a set of traffic lights, I spotted a man travelling into work by unicycle. He was riding admirably well, but I have to say, it’s not the kind of challenge I’d want to start my day with. Taking my inspiration from the intrepid unicyclist, I’ve …
What have the Romans ever done for us? Read More »
The etymology of mathematics absolutely fascinates me. The English language is remarkably irregular, but mathematical language is so close to the original Latin and Greek roots that it really can be broken down into constituent parts to derive meanings. Therefore, I really enjoyed a post from Don Steward earlier this year, pointing out that the word …
What’s in a name? (Fractions) Read More »
I had no idea what to blog about today. I spent all morning cleaning out my garage, just sat down to start writing and was clean out of inspiration. Therefore, I thought I’d plump for one of my go-to activities when there’s five minutes to kill at the end of the lesson. I do this …
So here’s a cute idea I was talking to a colleague about yesterday. I think I got this from Johnny Ball when I saw him present at MathsConf3 last March. I’m unsure of any practical applications but it’s a nice bit of maths. Draw a quadratic curve – the simplest one’s just y = x². …
Quadratic crossover Read More »
It’s going to be a quick one today as it’s Friday and I’m shattered! I’ve just got in from work and I’m desperately trying to get this out of the way before my OH finishes work and starts demanding my attention. I’m taking my inspiration from a comment from @marcusbelben on my post about spherical and hyperbolic …