Resourceaholic: 5 Maths Gems #159

Welcome to my 159^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Proportional Relationships
@nathanday314 shared some questions that he used in a Year 9 lesson. He says they provoked fantastic discussion amongst his students. Notice the connections between each question.

2. Area of Trapezium

3. Circle Theorems and Similarity
I love these Higher GCSE questions shared by @DrPMaths.

4. Using Geogebra
@Mr_Rowlandson has created an excellent training booklet for secondary maths teachers who are learning how to use Geogebra. Thanks Paul!

5. Pie Charts and Bearings

@giftedHKO shared loads of excellent resources at #mathsconf29. I particularly like this clever bearings task:

And this lovely proportional thinking task on pie charts:

Update

It seems like a ridiculously long time since my last post. I can’t handle the workload that my role brings in the second half of the summer term (timetabling, running assessments and reports, primary transition, etc etc, and all without the luxury of gained time because we only have Years 7 to 10!). Thankfully next year things will be different, as I’m changing roles, and I hope to be able to give resourceaholic more of my time.

Despite the challenges of the summer term, I did (of course!) make time for mathsconf last weekend. I have done a mathsconf every June since 2015. I love it when these conferences take place in Kettering because it’s so easy to get to by train (except when there’s a national train strike…).

Thank you to everyone who attended my talk ‘Challenge in Every Topic’ which I particularly enjoyed planning and delivering. It was one of my favourites. I’ve decided not to share the slides here so I can repeat the workshop at conferences in the future, but delegates have been sent the slides by La Salle.

I also had the privilege of attending the MEI Conference on Thursday and Friday. I was given two days away from school to attend this, which I am incredibly grateful for. The conference was sponsored by Casio who not only provided the best conference goody bags ever (including Casio hoodies!) but also funded seemingly endless wine with the conference dinner! Yay for Casio.

The MEI Conference has a very different vibe to the Saturday mathsconfs. It’s more academic, moves at a different pace and feels highly collaborative (there were lots of opportunities to have deep, reflective discussions with both fellow teachers and maths education experts).

I had a great time at both events, and now have a lot of ideas buzzing in my head for September.

I also enjoyed wearing my two new maths t shirts to these conferences! (both from Redbubble – I ended up getting one for free because they messed up my order!).

Here are a few things you might have missed in recent weeks:

Sparx Maths has produced a free Year 6 – Year 7 Transition Booklet. Here they’ve collated a list of 130 questions to support Year 6 students’ transitioning into Year 7. You can download it here.
La Salle recently released a free 128-page Task Booklet. It’s a collection of carefully crafted tasks which aim to promote mathematical thinking and behaviour in the classroom.

I plan to write a few blog posts over summer about challenge at Key Stage 3, so do look out for them.

Finally, have you seen the lovely new maths sets from Helix? They sent me a few to try out. I love the colours, and the fact they are made from recycled materials. Thanks Helix!