MathsClass

Nothing to do with MathsClass, this week saw the addition of Emma to our family.

Four maths teachers kindly shared their work on MathsFaculty for others to use.

Recently my online focus has shifted to my network of sites. This network is about making the essentials for maths teaching easier to find and more accessible.

MathsKit is a page of all those everyday resources.
MathsLinks now has over 500 online activites for maths, all categorised.
My new site, MathsFaculty is for maths teachers to share. I suspect that everyday, teachers waste time searching for, and if they don’t find, creating resources. Let’s fix that by sharing.

Each week, I’m going to use this blog to summarise what has been added across these sites.

* “This Week” is more like “recently” for this first review.

I recently received an email from the AAMT:

National Mathematics Day is Friday 18 May and looks at codes and code-breaking — to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing.

Each year I use the TV Show, The Biggest Loser, as an application of percentages – here is a worksheet for 2012 setting out the contestant data that your students can use to perform some calculations.

I’m completing this activity earlier than normal this year, so the data is from earlier in the competition.

I recently used the “Locker Problem” in a Year 7 Maths Enrichment class (mixed ability). Here are some resources I used:

I’ve updated the Quick Quiz app on MathsStarters.

Where do you go for maths lessons and good lesson ideas?
Here’s the start of my list, I’m not particularly recommending these sites, just listing them as places to look for ideas.

2011 (my 6th year of teaching) was a year of befuddlement¹.

Whilst often used as a textbook example, I had never seen negative numbers used in a lift before.

I recently spent some time improving MathsLinks and adding some new features.

A number plane drawing worksheet for making the Superman logo. Included in the file (see below) is a page with a suitable coordinate grid.

On MathsStarters, I have added a Frequency Distribution Table tool. The tool lets you have 3 to 10 scores, you tally as you go and the frequency and total are calculated.

You could use this on a projector/IWB (the buttons for incrementing the tally are sized for an IWB). Or, students could use this to record data on their own laptop as they collect it – paperless!

Smartie colours are not evenly distributed across the two bags of 11 fun size boxes I used with my class:

Playing with the kids' toys on the weekend, I came across this car and became interested by the relationship between pulling it back and how far it would travel.

Was it a linear relationship or something else?

Looking around, there are lots of activities for collecting and analysing data using small boxes of Smarties. Here is my version.

I’m not trying to present a view, either way, on the carbon tax being debated in Australia. But those against the carbon tax seem to be providing some good fodder for the maths classroom.

… well, a bigger school.

I’ve had interest in how I make self-checking worksheets using Excel.

I got this flyer in the mailbox today (extract)…

Last term I had Year 9 review and learn index notation and the index laws through some self-directed activities.

For 4 weeks this term, I handed over 3 of my classes (Year 7, 8 and 9 5.3) to a pre-service teacher from UWS. This is an important time for a pre-service teacher when in total they only spend 8 weeks in the classroom before ‘becoming a teacher’.

I know there are stacks of GeoGebra files available on the Internet, but I’ve started putting my own here on the site.

Some games, played with dice, for getting the hang of decimal place value.

Having made a Tables Spider this other day, I realised that I made myself a template for creating all sorts of “spiders”.

With Stu Hasic’s Student Response Network (SRN) virtual clicker software installed on the 2011 DER laptops that NSW public school students in Year 9 receive this year, I wanted to try it out.

In 2007, I wrote about a resource, a Number Spider, that I used as a lesson starter.

Each year I use the TV Show, The Biggest Loser, as an application of percentages.

A worksheet to accompany the online tool Pictogram Graph (see on MathsLinks).

Here are some resources for the new year…

Feeling nerdy? Backing this project on KickStarter will get you a Mathematician’s Dice for just $5 (2 for $10, 4 for $20).

Rather than the boring numbers 1 to 6, these dice have the six most important numbers in mathematics on them — i, 0, 1, φ, e and π!

A quote:

Learning math is like learning to play the piano. First menial arithmetic and endless scales, but then Chopin and one’s imagination. @mathematicsprof

Having done both (learn maths and learn the piano) I love this quote. I hated scales when learning the piano. It wasn’t till I had got through my many years of formal piano lessons that I understood how fundamental learning scales was to everything I can do on the piano. As teachers of maths, we face that same kid, trying to convince them that what they are learning now will bring them greater understanding later.

When introducing the topic of ‘ratio’, I use the mixing of cordial as an illustration that most kids get.
The idea of using 1 part of cordial to 4 parts of water makes sense to them – and they get the idea of equivalence when you mix the cordial in a different sized container (I use the examples of using cups to fill a bottle for a picnic, and using buckets to mix a big batch for a party).

I wrote about my t-shirt box back in 2009. It’s a resource I still use in my classroom. When teaching surface area I have peel off sides for the box which can be placed on the board to show the net.

Four years ago today, the first post on this blog was published.

Tanya Duffy shared a great coordinate geometry activity on a private forum earlier in December.

You might have seen this map featured around the place recently:

So I wondered, what if the largest countries had the biggest populations?

I like teaching surface area, I think it’s an interesting topic. Yet, I find kids struggle with the concept. Not understanding the basics of area and then getting over the prior knowledge of solids meaning volume are two aspects that cause some difficulty.

This is a great interactive for representing simple inequalities on the number line: Inequalities with GeoGebra.

Returning from a few weeks leave, it wasn’t clear where my Year 8s were up to. I figured they had started looking at grouped data, but I didn’t want to repeat work they might have already seen.

I’ve added a nice little feature to the MathsLinks site – Favourites.

I showed WCYDWT: Spacing Evenly to some of my classes this week. A couple of reflections…

A real-life version of this problem presented itself today.

(Source: Elementary Math Mastery, Rhonda Farkota)

Jeff of Webmaths points out a new Australian TV show, Letters and Numbers.

Things are tough at my school at the moment, tougher than normal. There are many reasons for that, this is not the post to discuss them though.

After 2 terms as a relieving Head Teacher, moving back to the normal classroom teacher load has been a bit of a shock. Even with faculty matters, I found myself achieving more of the extra things as a Head Teacher.

For Australian teachers with access to objects from The Le@rning Federation, the resource Bridge Builder is a nice way to deal with geometric patterns and finding the algebraic rule.

It’s that time of year again… that’s right… Year 8 solving equations.

Welcome to the new look MathsClass site.

Each year for the Term 3 SDD (Staff Development Day), the four schools (three 7-10 and one 11-12) in the collegiate I work in get together for a combined program.

In recent years, Sydney Water has been encouraging households to save water. “With limited and highly variable rainfall in the catchments, the community can no longer rely on water from the dams.” source

After the recent redesign of MathsKit, the next site I have redesigned, or really launched is MathsLinks.

The end of term series of posts are some of the most popular on this site.

For a while, I’ve been developing a new look for this site and working out how to better connect my maths sites.

This is a resource for skills in working with time.

I’ve been trying to increase my use of the laptops with Year 9.

In the NSW Mathematics Syllabus students are to learn about “rounding numbers to a specified number of significant figures” [NS5.2.1].

This is a fairly simple activity that allows for something different in the teaching of Pythagoras’ Theorem.

I think this is essential viewing for Mathematics teachers. I’ve been waiting for a meeting with my faculty to show them, which I got to do on Thursday.

Dan Meyer blogs at dy/dan, which you are already reading as a maths teacher… right?

Here’s a quick starter activity for rounding.

How do you make a unit on percentages richer / project-based / engaging / authentic?

Polite names of course!

A 2 question poll about the name used to refer to the mathematics staff at your school.

I suspect most readers of this blog would agree that online networking with other teachers is now the key form of professional development. Yet, we would all know many teachers who are not engaging online in discussions with colleagues.

A different term to say the least. The lack of posts on this site illustrates how busy things were.

Starting Algebra with Year 8, we spend a couple of lessons on various “algebraic techniques”. I’ve been trying to find some activities which provide a little more engagement. I created “The Land of Algerb“ to explain multiplying pronumerals.

In 2009, Year 9 got their DER netbooks and now they are in Year 10. This year’s Year 9 does not have their netbooks yet, and so this gives teachers a little time to get their heads around the inclusion of netbooks into the classroom. This year, I’m teaching a 5.2 pathway Year 10 class (and a Year 9 5.2 class).

For NSW DET teachers, I’m sure you know of TaLe, and hopefully have seen some of the resources for the DER that have been published there. One category of resources has been called Laptop Wraps (they are also available publicly).

I really appreciate having my own classroom for many reasons, but one is the ability to place student work (the fun stuff) around the classroom.

I just posted on my personal blog about how I use the web, looking at how the various technologies (RSS) and tools (Google Reader, Delicious, Twitter) fit together.

This is where I hope I’m headed in 2010.

Teacher’s all have their own way of keeping track of student attendance, and other aspects that are recorded in class. Here’s mine, it might give you some ideas.

Usually I would reflect here on the year past. To be completely honest, I couldn’t be bothered reflecting on 2009. If I were to write down my thoughts, it would pretty much read like the post from February of 2009: Looking to 2009. It was a tiring and quite often frustrating year.

Reading blogs and networking on Twitter seem an obvious part of being a teacher. Yet when I take in to school a shiny new resource that I’ve received through one of these means, I usually get asked “where did you find this?”. The person behind the question is often thinking that I spend copious hours sitting at home in front of a computer “web surfing” or trying endless combinations of search terms in Google.

Some chocolate discussion starters for looking at bar graphs: a series of chocolate bar graphs.

This week, my Year 8s have been looking at inequality signs, graphing inequalities and solving simple (one-step) inequalities. Today, after solving inequalities, we played a simple game. A simple, obvious game, that really doesn’t warrant a blog post.

Here are my nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards.

The end of term/year often brings lots of disruptions. So, as much as I like to keep teaching till the end, some days require something a little different. I like hands-on quasi-mathematical activities that allow every student to engage with and complete. And on Thursday, just before having one of those disrupted days, I found this…

Despite every Year 9 student having a laptop for a few weeks, the topics we’ve been covering haven’t lent themselves to full laptop lessons. To end the term, though, we’re reviewing graphs.

A lesson for Year 9 students with DER laptops, or anyone really.

Here’s a great example of a graph that is just wrong, the data may be correct, but it has obviously been represented the wrong way. Watch the video…

I think that each student using a netbook/laptop in your class presents some slightly different issues in Maths.

I’m about to get into Surface Area with Year 8. Of course, there will be chocolate. But, since I last looked at Surface Area with Year 9 I’ve been thinking about Heat Sinks.

I have turned off the automatic inclusion of my Delicious “maths” links in the update feed/email for this site.

This is an amusing video to introduce probability… some of my Year 8s found it hilarious.

As I mentioned, the DER roll-out hit my classroom as we were in the midst of Algebra. Due to a tight program and exams shortly, I had to stick with a couple of topics which don’t really allow for “play” on the laptops as much as I would have liked.

A lot of the Algebra taught at the Stage 4 level is technique, and so matching activities work particularly well to practise and review skills.

Here’s a review of some of the ways I’ve found to make matching activities for use on the laptops.

Not really maths related, but handy if you’re looking at a web-site that will be used on a Netbook.

Report writing season… ponder kid, ponder kid, write a paragraph of positive when you’d rather be honest, edit, colleague cooperatively corrects copied carelessness, supervisor strikethroughs signify subtle substitutions, remove commas, add c,o,m,m,a,s, throw in a hyp-hen for good measure, correct, copy to system, shorten, review, save, have a life… wait for reports to be published… find report in bin.

Week 1 is over, and I need to reflect on what happen when I introduced laptops into my classroom.

A Digital Education Revolution (DER) laptop in the hands of all Year 9 students changes everything… or does it?

I recently created a site called MathsKit. Whilst I added some links to it on this site, I haven’t actually mentioned it yet.

Year 9 got their DER netbooks just before the end of Term 3. The first week of Term 4 will be the first time they have them in class, so I wanted to start term with some introductory activities, with a Maths focus.

This post is a work in progress, check back for updates.

20 Oct 2009: Go to update

I’ve been meaning to try ClassTools.net for a while. With ClassTools.net you can make interactive Flash games, from a range of templates, then save and share them.

Tomorrow is the last day of term… hurray! Here’s another end of term activity for use with your maths class.

If you’re looking for more number plane drawings, but lean towards AFL, then check out Jeff Trevaskis’ Western Bulldogs Number Plane Logo from his blog, Webmaths. Nice one Jeff!

In my IST class, we’re studying Modeling and Simulation, and started to make a model of a dice using Excel.

Thinking about it, the technique involved in making this would also be of interest to Maths teachers.

Brad Bennett, a student at a NSW DET Public High School, has made a site called DERNSW Tutorials – Tutorials for students and teachers using NSWDER laptops.

Last year, I posted the Melbourne Storm Number Plane Logo – and today, exactly one year later, purely by coincidence, I’ve made a Brisbane Broncos Number Place activity.

Year 8 were recently assessed on solving equations and I was a little perplexed by the results.

There has been a debate in Australia about the creation of league tables comparing schools. I think the government(s) intention is to just make more data publicly available and easily accessible. No matter what the data says, or the impact of producing the data, the one thing the government(s) have not explained, let alone committed to, is what they will do if the data shows an under performing school (whatever that means).

Having found this tip on elearnr.org Doug Belshaw’s blog about using PowerPoint:

Find graphics that represent things you do frequently in lessons (perhaps from clipart) and always use these when doing a similar activity. For example, a pen writing for when it’s time to start work or two people talking for discussion/group work. These help reinforce good habits and aid classroom management.

I went looking for some nice graphics to use.

An excuse to use chocolate in a maths lesson…

This week, Year 9 were looking at finding the perimeter of shapes that include curves (parts of a circle).

Here’s a quirky little activity that uses the DER laptops.

As a PBL school, we have lots of “Student Expectations” at our school for nearly all aspects of an ordinary day (entering the classroom, in the playground, walking through a corridor – we have narrow corridors, formal assembly). In a couple of weeks, there will be another aspect of the “ordinary day” – laptops. So, I’ve drafted some student expectations for the technology committee at my school to discuss.

As part of the last lesson with my Year 9 class in Term 2, I asked them to write me an email expressing their thoughts about getting their own laptop in Term 3.

This article is not a “how-to” but rather some thinking about using GeoGebra (a discussion starter maybe).

For NSW DET teachers, the Curriculum Support web-site has been updated with resources for the DER, i.e. the laptops being rolled out to Year 9 students.

A quick read… some thoughts on 1:1 Computing from the “Free Technology for Teachers” blog: 10 Things Teachers Should Know Before 1:1.

Updated: Another new article: Ready for 1:1? Check this list before you answer from Darcy Moore a DP at Dapto H.S.

Teacher’s throughout NSW DET schools are starting to receive their DER netbooks.

Google Sketchup is one of the applications bundled on the DER netbooks being rolled out into NSW Public High Schools in Term 3. But as it’s free, you can download it now for Windows XP/Vista & Mac OS X.

From The Australian, Technology lesson one: teach the teachers comes this:

… “This isn’t just about teaching teachers to use the technology,” Professor Stoney said.
“It’s about teaching them to use it for learning. How do students learn with technology?

I recently contributed some comments to the executive at my school about the DET roll-out expected to be happening soon. A slightly editted version is below. I’m really not sure where the executive are at with this roll-out, I haven’t heard much except from the computer coordinator – it’s a shame, or more accurately, it makes me nervous, because there is the potential for a lot of problems to arise from this roll-out if we’re not prepared. I’m republishing my comments because they might help you in engaging with your school about planning and preparation.

Still on capacity. With Australia having been in a drought since 2003 another interesting way to engage with the topic of capacity is to look at the water storage levels.

My previous post on having an IWB in my classroom was written about three weeks after it’s installation. Tomorrow, we’ve got an IWB consultant/trainer/type-person-thingy coming to school, and I was asked to share what I’ve been doing with the IWB. So I wrote a quick list.

The DER, as it is unfortunately named, is about to hit NSW schools.

What else could you do with capacity? As I was getting a glass of juice to have with my breakfast, I was thinking that I could use this image as a quick question at the start of a lesson.

With laptops rolling out shortly and projectors appearing in some classrooms, we should be thinking about collecting digital media for use as stimulus or investigation material. So, the other day when filling up my young daughter’s bottles, I took some pictures.

For a while I’ve been collecting and saving to a web-site maths objects to use with my classes. By objects I mean single activities, rather than a web-site of maths activities. I’ve been trying to take some of the many things I find and save to delicious and put a purpose to them – deciding that it’s something I could use with one of my classes.

I wanted to play a multiplication bingo type game with a class the other day, so I grabbed two 10 sided dice (apparently you don’t need to call a single dice a “die” anymore) out of the cupboard. Then I thought… hey I have a projector and a laptop.

If you missed it in the comments to an earlier post. There are two new wikis you might want to keep an eye on as a NSW DET teacher (or any Maths teacher really).

The NSW DET will shortly equip Year 9 students with a Lenovo S10e netbook as part of a program called “Laptops for Learning” (L4L). To me, if we are going to do this – then it’s time to include some good software on these machines and help out schools who cannot afford some of the more exciting applications.

Depending on what they’ve previously experienced, students struggle with the immense scale of the universe (mind you, so do I).

When starting “Volume” with Year 8, we start by looking at cubic units and isometric drawings. This year, with an interactive whiteboard (although, these resources are also suited for use with just a projector or in a computer lab), I was able to use a couple of excellent online resources.

Are you drawing mathematical diagrams in Microsoft Word? You might even be achieving success doing this; once you’ve worked out how to wrangle Microsoft apps to do what you want, they can be powerful. But, for drawing mathematical diagrams there are better options.

FX Draw by Efofex is the application for drawing static diagrams for inclusion in worksheets, assessment tasks etc. The one down-side of this software is that there is no Mac version. (The rest of the Efofex MathPack is worth the money as well)

I was preparing for part of a presentation to the staff at my school tomorrow, highlighting the importance of numeracy being included in all subject areas.

Term 3 will see the roll-out of netbooks to Year 9 at my school (some photos of the Lenovo S10e).

I’ve been thinking about how to prepare for this roll-out in my own teaching.

Here’s a PowerPoint file I made to quickly review transformations before getting into congruency.

I wonder how often maths teachers make confusing statements like this in class:

Single aged pensioners may lose one-third of an expected $30-a-week increase in the May 12 budget. [emphasis mine, front page of smh.com.au on 26th April 2009]

What they actually mean is that the expected increase will be $20.

Eating chocolate could improve the brain’s ability to do maths.

[full story: telegraph.co.uk]

AKA, justifying the use of Freddos in the maths classroom.

I need to learn to use GeoGebra because it looks like a fantastic app, it’s free and shortly our students will have their own netbooks, itching to use them. I find the best way to learn new software is to do something with it that you need.

This may be the first of several posts as I review the effectiveness of having an Interactive Whiteboard in my classroom.

The Biggest Loser, the Australian version, is again on television. This year, Year 9 are looking at Percentages at the same time.

The last week of term begins next week…

I have watched with interest the Digital Education Revolution proposed by the Australia Government. Issues of cost seem to have been resolved and I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the NSW DET is pushing a one laptop fits all model (although I think it’s flawed). I’ve read the tender for the “DET Learning Device” and have even dissected it with my computing class. But today, 1st April – fitting really – a significant step to realisation has been taken with the announcement of the hardware and software to be supplied.

It’s been a little quiet around here – mainly due to the busy time of term and sickness.

Anyway, I recently got a packet of protractors for my class. Every one of them has a problem, maybe you can spot it.

I used to think that I knew what 1 billion was, i.e. 1 000 000 000 000. Then a couple of years ago, I looked on Wikipedia and found there were two defintions: Long and short scales.

Dilbert answers:

As part of a unit on Trigonometry, we review compass and true bearings before working with bearings in Trigonometry problems.
To start this review lesson, we looked at some images from Google Earth.

A really easy way to create engagement when introducing a new topic is to explain some of it’s applications outside of the maths classroom. For Trigonometry, I use an explanation of how I used trigonometry in a previous career to find the height of trees.

If you don’t have The Big Picture from boston.com in your RSS feeds, it’s time to add it. Alan Taylor regularly collects some fascinating photos together. This edition, At work.

Having even a basic but strong numeracy to you is something that really can give you a lot of advantage in life.

The NSW DET have published their first e-zine for Parents which includes an interview with Adam Spencer (Breakfast radio presenter on ABC 702 and Mathematician) by James O’Loughlin. It’s a helpful discussion about Mathematics at school and how parents might help their kids.

This blog is about Maths teaching, however this year (as noted in an earlier post), I’m also teaching a computing subject: Information and Software Technology. Occassionally, I’ll post something that is more related to a computing subject than Maths, but hopefully everyone reading this blog will still find it interesting.

We celebrated 12345678890 Day in class today…

In my fourth year of teaching, I’m finally happy with how teaching sector graphs went.

In a previous post I talked about the Digital Education Revolution – the roll-out of student laptops. There will probably be quite a few posts on that topic this year.

Keep an eye out when shopping, a great maths teaching aid could be staring you in the face.

It’s a new school year. This post, therefore, should be full of optimism and goals. But, please indulge me in a short whine.

It’s hot, ridiculously hot.

2009 will be my fourth year of teaching. There are a few things happening this year that I want to note now, so I can reflect on their outcomes at the end of the year.

The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (AAMT) recently created a web-site called “You Can Do Maths”.  From the site:

The youcandomaths campaign encourages all young people and their families to appreciate the important role mathematics plays in many careers and everyday life.

An embarrassing, and slightly funny, example of why Mathematics is important (in this case, being able to read a calendar).

This post is my entry to Dan Meyer’s contest My Annual Report II.

Going into school today, I was looking forward to seeing a new digital projector and Interactive Whiteboard installed in my classroom.

There are a couple of previously published resources on this site that might help you out as you prepare for the new school year.

Another good video from The Common Craft Show.  This one is on Borrowing Money.

Recently Dan Meyer posted his thoughts on the ideal maths textbook, which would actually be a digital archive of very interesting mathematical media.  This is a great idea, and whilst I don’t have a projector in my classroom yet (although fingers-crossed), it would be something that I would buy/subscribe to.  Anyway, there was a challenge in this for me: being mindful of the media I consume and the world around me to collect digital bits and pieces that might help explain a mathematical concept (I commented on Dan’s blog that I missed the opportunity to take a picture of 3m³ of dirt I had delivered).  The second, to my mind harder, challenge is to take that item and make a meaningful and engaging connection with a concept being taught in class.

Continuing my review of teaching in 2008.

As I was putting together a lesson on using conversion graphs, I couldn’t find a nice temperature conversion graph - so I created one.

This video from The Common Craft Show is an excellent “introduction to the magic of compound interest and how it helps money grow over time”.  Keep an eye out for more videos in their financial basics series.

In my post Thinking about 2008 I noted four things to improve my teaching in 2008, here I review how I did.

Creating a maths worksheet in Microsoft Word without using the proper symbols does not present well – I’m sure you’ve seen 2 * 2 = 4 or 2 x 2 = 4 rather than 2 × 2 = 4.  My previous post, Maths symbols in Word is one of the most popular on this site.  In that post, I gave shortcuts for inserting mathematical symbols into Word - the post was specific to the Windows version of Word.  As I’ve been a Mac user for a year, it’s time to make a similar post for Mac users.

I’m currently sorting through the many teaching blogs I subscribe to, trying to cull the list.  The thing about Maths related blogs that tends to keep them in the list is that Maths teachers generally write more practical posts.

Here’s a video about the history of number, in particular the numbers 0 and 1.  Our Year 7 program begins the year looking at ancient number systems, so this video will fit in nicely.

Today I finished moving MathsClass.  You’ll hopefully notice no difference, but it changes some things for me and allows me to expand this site a little in the next couple of weeks.  As a result, if you subscribe to this site via the feed or by email, you may have seen old entries reposted as new - sorry about that.  They’re obviously not new, but in the moving process were “updated”, hence they’ve reappeared in the feed and email updates.

Merry Christmas, and if you’re looking for something to do this break, check out the properties of your favourite numbers on the Number Dictionary (unfortunate URL, but a good site).

The end of year activity of choice this year, will be making Zombies!

MathClass has sort of become a blog of resources, rather than a more general conversation about teaching.  I’m not sure whether that’s necessarily a bad thing, so I’d like to know what my readers think.

Trying to motivate Year 10 after the School Certificate Exams are completed is tough.  I like to use geometric design activities.  Whilst they seem like “fun”, or at least non-taxing on the brain – they get the students following a procedure, using geometric instruments and can be lead to a good discussion about the Mathematics of design.

Around this time each year, our programs have Year 8 and Year 10 looking at the Number Plane.  For the end of the term, it’s nice timing, because it allows us to draw some pictures on the number plane.  One favourite is the logos of various

NRL

teams.

Understanding the concept of a fraction by shading in a part of a shape is a fairly standard introductory activity.  When I did a search on Flickr for fractions, I found this set of fraction shading diagrams^*.  What I liked about these diagrams is that you are required to represent two fractions on one diagram.

This simple design activity could be used as something extra whilst Year 7 are using geometric instruments and learning about perpendicular lines.  Or, as a stand-alone activity.

Building an Angle Wheel is a great way to consolidate an introduction to angles for Year 7.

The Search π website does just that, allows you to search the first 3.2 billiion digits of pi for a string of numbers.

When looking at measurement, year 7 measure “body units” and use them to measure things in the classroom, as an example of estimating.  Then, when we move onto perimeter, we come back to one body unit, the pace.

Starting a lesson on profit and loss with this story, quickly introduces some key concepts and we have a bit of fun.

For many students, working with directed numbers (positive & negative numbers) requires the visual aid of using a number line.

‘The Biggest Loser’, the Australian version, is currently on Channel 10.  Conveniently, it appears on TV the same time we’re looking at Percentages with Year 8 providing a great connection between popular culture and maths.

There’s a lot said in university lectures, teacher inservices and blogs about how we should be teaching.

Two very handy fonts that will help make worksheets and other computer created resources look great.

I’ve found that teaching is one of those jobs where you end up making “to-do” lists.  Years ago, I was determined to do away with paper-based to-do lists chasing me around.  I started using Backpack described as an “information organiser” — Gather your ideas, to-dos, notes, photos & files online.

Google have added a nice little feature to their online spreadsheet – the ability to collect information via an online form.

Each year, we review the four basic operations with Year 7.  We don’t re-teach, because they would have already developed a method in primary school.  So, for each operation, we mind map different methods for solving a couple of different problems.

In the first lesson with each of my classes, I gave them a chance to let me know how they felt about maths.  I hope this conveyed to my students that I am interested in what they like about maths and what they find difficult, it also gives me a basis for creating activities and future reflection to see what we’ve achieved.

MathsClass is about teaching and learning in a maths classroom.

Thinking about my 3rd year of teaching… 2008.

It’s been two terms since my last post on this blog, End of term activities.  So, as I return to this blog at the end of the year, here are some more “last day” type activities.

For the last day of term, lessons may not follow a normal program, however they can still be engaging and mathematics related.

Lesson Starters is a page full of activities to start a mathematics lesson.

One I’ve used is Number Spiders, there’s even an overhead (PDF) ready to print.  Keep it in your classroom for those days when you know the start of the lesson is going to be disrupted.

Another game, this time for the most basic “technology” in the maths classroom - the calculator.

I had a chance the other day, rare, to reflect on what was happening in my classroom during class time.  I noted one of the inconsistencies in my language.

I’m trying to build up a collection of maths games for lesson fillers, reward and skills practise.

An outdoors activity is always a welcome change to a maths lesson.  To introduce rates, I take the class outdoors to measure their heart rate.

Here’s a nice page of resources for Mathematics teachers, published via the EAA (Educational Assessment Australia, UNSW).

In this second post about using Excel to generate random questions, the first showed how to make a question about money, I show the simple formulae used to generate questions using the 4 basic operations.

CombiNumerals is a really handy font for Mac and Windows.

University teacher training can only teach you so much, there are many aspects of being a teacher that university does not prepare you for.

At my school, one of our key values is “organisation”.  Organisation covers many things in our school, like lining up, walking on the left, and bringing the necessary equipment each day.  In the classroom, organisation is encouraged through regular book checks.

Excel, part of Microsoft Office, is great for working with numbers.  For a maths class, Excel can be used for standard applications like working with tables of data and creating graphs.  Other teaching and learning applications that I’ve seen include creating self-marking computer based worksheets, interactive worksheets using sliders and even randomly generating questions for paper worksheets.

The new school year in Australia starts in just over a day.  Here’s a “new school year helpful printable download”.

There are two search boxes in the right-hand column of this site.  The first just searches this site.  The second is much more interesting.

One of the difficulties I found in my first year, was using technology in the classroom for the teaching and learning of mathematics.

In the 16th January 2007 episode of the BBC’s program Digital Planet, Gareth Mitchell talks to the authors of a report about children and technology.  The report is titled “Their Space: Education for a digital generation”.  It’s a free PDF download.  I haven’t read it yet… maybe some reflections in a future post.

Many teachers use Microsoft Word to create worksheets.  It’s not designed for the job, there are better options but Word is the easiest to learn and has the greatest compatibility - making it easy to share documents.  One of the problems I see is that many people don’t know how to insert symbols into their document.  For example, x (the letter) is not a good substitue for × (the multiplication symbol).  This post shows you how to insert symbols like ×, ÷ and π quickly, on most computers (a Windows PC running Microsoft office).