As Pi Day rolls round again, I’ve pinched one of my colleague’s “Pi Kits” and have now done this lesson with Year 7, 8 and 9 this week. It’s my favourite way of teaching circumference and area of a circle, both the first time pupils encounter it and as a reminder before teaching any new …
This was one of the first lessons I wrote in the first year of my teaching career, and is still one of my favourite ways to introduce pie charts. There’s also loads of scope for adding extra stuff in, such as work on fractions and percentages if appropriate for the group. Pupils begin by thinking …
Introducing pie charts using the average day Read More »
Just a quickie tonight to share the love for a few maths puzzle booklets I’ve found kicking around on the Internet. I’m not sure where they’ve come from originally, but here are the links: Maths Practice Puzzles : Fractions and DecimalsIncludes: Equivalent fractions Comparing and ordering fractions LCD and simplifying fractions Addition and subtraction (like …
Maths puzzles galore! Read More »
I absolutely love teaching Pythagoras’ theorem – not sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with the sense of “wow” I got when I first learned about it and realised that maths isn’t all about doing sums. There’s loads of really interesting stuff you can do with it, and as the first …
Teaching Pythagoras’ theorem Read More »
It arrived! Having ordered a copy of Alex Bellos’s second book, Alex Through the Looking Glass right after discovering it existed a few days ago, the gods at Amazon finally decided to deposit it on my doormat this afternoon. I nearly crushed it when I opened the door… So after hacking into it with an over-large knife …
Through the looking glass Read More »
Thank you, Internet, for wasting my evening. I don’t know how I found this on YouTube – one of my random click-a-thons searching for goodies, and I’m a sucker for “magic maths” tricks. This one is how to square any (two-digit) number mentally. If you don’t want to watch the video, here’s the basic idea …
Just a quick post to say I’ve just found an excellent site for quick starters and practice – Flash Maths is chock full of Flash applications for generating questions on loads of different topics. A five-minute poke-around unearthed these little gems: Equation Roulette: Generates linear equations up to old NC level 7. The buttons at the top …
This investigation is great for getting pupils to “spot” square number patterns – it’s particularly useful as a little starter a couple of weeks after completing the topic to remind them of the sequence of square numbers. Pupils could also make the patterns from multi-link cubes and then demonstrate how the top and bottom patterns …
Pupils explore which numbers can be written as the difference of two square numbers; a nice way to practise calculating with square numbers, but also encourages them to pattern-spot at the same time.
Square differences Read More »
This is one of my absolute favourite investigations to use when teaching square numbers. It can fit quite nicely into 15/20 minutes as a simple activity, or extend to a whole lesson with the class working together. To find out if a number is happy: Pick any two-digit number (e.g. 23). Square and add the …