Maths Teacher Toolkit

A collection of resources to help maths tachers

[mathsteachertoolkit]

Retrieval facts starter

A really helpful retrieval facts starter for GCSE students. You can vary this tool to show the question, the diagram and the answer.

What you can do for lower attaining students is keep it straight forward- simple question and diagram inclusion. You could also remove the pictures for some of the questions (of course some of these are necessary) to make it a bit more challenging.

For high attaining students you can vary as shown above, you can include a fill in the blanks for students to create questions, add a diagram to represent the question and answer or to simply answer the question. This creates a link to a high level of Bloom’s taxonomy (create) without being too challenging.

You can also vary the difficulty and number of questions for use with different groups.

https://mathsbot.com/gcse/retrieval

[fuckyeahdialectics]

Education doesn’t change the world. Education changes people. People change the world.

Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator, philosopher, critical pedagogist (unattributable)  (via fuckyeahdialectics)

[thesociologicalcinema]

Annotated Example of How to Write an Essay

Source: Adapted from University of Newcastle, Australia

[thesociologicalcinema]

coursera.com: free college classes you can take online

slader.com: literally every textbook’s answer

worlramalpha.com: can solve almost any mathematical equations

readanybook.com: free books

thriftbooks.com: cheap books

polishmywriting.com: paste a text into it & it’ll give you grammar & spelling corrections

tipofmytongue.com: helps you find the word you were thinking of

gutenberg.com: free ebooks to download

~ @negativefeedback-teen

[inkblue-computerhead]

some things i’ve learned while studying in quarantine

drink more water instead of more coffee.

weekly goals are bullshit. set yourself 3-day goals. you’ll be less laid-back.

don’t just mindlessly stare at words. before you start studying, know your approach to it. have a plan.

summarizing the concept in your own words is the key part of taking notes. don’t just copy things down, convert them into your own way of talking, your own vocabulary, no matter how dumb and unprofessional it sounds.

don’t let the “studyblr aesthetic” fool you. studying doesn’t have to be pretty. summaries and notes can be messy as long as they’re comprehensible. you can always rewrite and reorganize them later. (honestly, you better do. and you better keep them.)

don’t throw away the papers you’ve solved your problems in. staple them to the fucking textbook. you need to see them constantly. cause you’ll need reminders of how far you’ve came, when you’re feeling discouraged.

don’t be an armchair analyst for your issues. if you have an idea then act on it.

remember: the exact point where it becomes difficult, is where your growth begins. take a deep breath, and try to focus on the paragraph in front of you.

get off your high horse and understand that if you’re a zero, you won’t go to 100 in a couple of days. first, you’ll need to reach 30, then from 30 to 60, and then from 60 to 90. nobody is 100 everyday. that happens very rarely.

you need to have fun everyday. you need to have peaceful time every single day. even on exam night. especially on exam night, actually. so make sure you’ve studied enough so you can have some time to yourself.

once you’re on a roll and in need of some challenge to stay on track, start writing down your studying hours. tell yourself you’re not allowed to do less than 80% of what you did yesterday. whatever the hell it was, even just one hour. so if yesterday you really studied for like, say 8 hours, today your goal is to study for at least 6 and a half hours. if you can’t keep up with that, make it 70%, or 60%. 

be forgiving of yourself. be kind to yourself. even if you bounced back and lost your streak. start again. as slowly as you did before. take your time. it’s okay, you were there once you can get there again.

[mathblab]

[Mathematics is] a very powerful and effective language invented by humans to describe and discover patterns in nature. When we perceive beauty in the mathematics, I think what we’re really perceiving is an underlying beauty in nature itself.

— Jim Baggott, Quantum Space

[numb3rth30ry]

Happy winter break, friends.

Mathematics is beautiful. <3

[mathsteachertoolkit]

BIDMAS bingo

Here is a cute little game to use with a class as a bit of a competition. Players (or teams) take it in turns to create equations and connect 4 numbers. The students roll the virtual dice and then try to reach 4 in a row. Not only do students aim to reach four in a roll, they can block another student and prevent them from winning the game.

Up to 4 players/teams can be used, each with a different colour (very helpful if your classroom is set up in 4 rows or columns). You could challenge every student to come up with a sum and then select one student from the row at random. You could also ask a student from each group to create an equation that would be useful for them.

If you have the resources you could ask students in groups of 4 to play the game together. Alternatively engage in one player mode with each student finding their own answer using the four numbers that appear. A student could then be selected to share their idea in the hopes of getting to the answer faster than previous attempts. This means the entire class is involved and students do not wait during opposing teams turns. To introduce a competition element you could award a ‘trophy’ to the class who completes the game in the smallest number of turns.

This game may be a little time consuming with larger numbers of teams.so it is worth bearing that in mind when planning to use this. This is a very nice way to encourage students to think about BIDMAS/BODMAS/PEMDAS/ whichever acronym you prefer relating to the order of operations.

[creativespacetime]

[psychtrainee]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IJDnhETiBR48BjM5HXhpY-srh5WACRMg/view

[sourcesforcourses]

Pythagoras theorem

[sourcesforcourses]

Pi

[mathsteachertoolkit]

Clumsy Clive and Erica’s Errors

Another useful set of worksheets with Clumsy Clive and Erica’s Errors. A set of excellent worksheets and questions which help diagnose misconceptions among classes.

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/clumsy-clive-on-fractions-11743135

These are a lovely way for students to discover different errors that might be made. This allows students to encounter common mistakes in mathematics  and investigate what someone has done wrong. I know one teacher whose students always ask ‘oh! what has Clive done this time!’

You could award achievement points for the first person to spot all the errors or each individual one. Or you could ask students at random what they think the mistake was. These worksheets are a really nice way of showing these errors to students without students having to make the mistakes themselves.

Erica’s Errors is very similar to Clumsy Clive but these are useful for A-level classes. Many more similar worksheets exist with a variety of names. If you search ‘spot the mistake’ these are super useful.

Please note the above link is for the fractions worksheet, there are much more available.

[mathsteachertoolkit]

AFL- the tally

Do you sometimes wonder how engaged your students are in your lessons?

How many times have you thought only 3 students contributed in your lessons, who is never asking for help?

One way around this is the use of a simple tally chart. Print out a seating plan and keep this on your desk. Then make a mark on the paper for each time they put their hand up, or you ask them a question, or the number of times they shout out an answer.

You could also get a colleague to observe you to keep track if possible. You could also use a colour code to assist. I have found this an excellent way to check which students are engaged and which students need a little more TLC in class- just to check how they are working.

[orlandoespinosa]

Being Persistent

Showing permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of the obstacles you encounter, shows character, commitment and competence! Don’t spend your time looking for perfection. Spend your time being persistent.

View On WordPress

[mathsteachertoolkit]

Symmetry artist

https://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/symmetry-artist.html

Thanks to flash becoming outdated, there are very few symmetry tools online. Thankfully mathsisfun has created a non-flash symmetry tool. This has both a rotational and a reflective tool.

This lovely tool is an excellent way for students to investigate symmetry. Another use of gamification, you could challenge students to find as many shapes with rotational symmetry 4 as they could, or the number of lines of symmetry in a rectangle.

This has a diverse range of tools and modes to help assist with investigations with symmetry.

[mathsteachertoolkit]

Corbett maths

A very well known website to spotlight here: Corbettmaths.

https://corbettmaths.com/contents/

This man has created such an excellent bank of worksheets an videos for use within the classroom (both virtual and real). His worksheets always contain a wide range of tasks as well as a bonus set of exam stye questions. A textbooks worth of questions are available online for free (what a legend for producing so much high quality material)

Not only are there worksheets, but videos to help demonstrate to students different techniques and methodology for mathematics topics.This really helped me try and show how to enlarge or rotate objects.

Whilst I still have not fully explored this website, using ctrl+f to find different topics has been very helpful for me.