MathsClass

Downloadable Essentials is a new section on MathsKit.

In meeting the purpose of MathsKit, quick links to resources for Maths teachers, there are free downloads of graph paper and lots of grid images. There are lots of sites offering free graph/grid paper, but not so many providing high quality grid images with the specific purpose of using them in a worksheet or exam create in Word (or other program). Please suggest other files that should be available, I will gradually make and add.

‘Tis the season to be programming.

Teachers in NSW are currently programming for the New NSW K–10 syllabuses for the Australian curriculum in Mathematics. (Of course, teachers in other states have already implemented the Australian Curriculum) As all these teachers are programming and collecting resources, I’ve updated MathsLinks and MathsFaculty with the outcomes from this new syllabus.

For a few years, I’ve noticed that kids not only don’t know/struggle with their times tables, but also general ‘number sense’.

Mathematical Induction, topic 7.4 in the NSW Board of Studies Mathematics Extension 1 Syllabus, is difficult conceptual. I suspect students think there is a bit of smoke and mirrors happening. One introduction that I use, I first saw in a resource by Stuart Palmer. The same story appears in this article online: Mathematical Induction (PDF 92KB), Helen Bush, Reflections August 1992 sourced on NSW HSC Online.

For users of Pinterest, you can now share links on MathsLinks to Pinterest. Click the Share dropdown.
Try it on this link, you get a nice screenshot of the site in Pinterest.

The “automatic simple random number generator” on MathsStarters got a little fix-up today.

Try out the Word Search on MathsStarters. There are only three versions at the moment (although the placement of the letters is different each time you play the game). If you’d like to add a game, just send me a comma-separated list of words and a title for you game. For teachers in NSW, Australia, my current aim is to make a word search for each topic in the NSW General Mathematics syllabus.

Also, I’ve added the search functionality back on this blog.

Today, MathsStarters Quick Quiz got an update with several additional quizzes. Bingo got a new game, ‘Writing Rates’.

The provider for screenshots on MathsLinks has been updating meaning that all sites now have a nice, slightly larger preview image. For YouTube videos, I’m getting a screenshot straight from the video.

Any link on MathsLinks can be “liked”. If you find a link useful, like it… just click the thumbs up. This lets teachers quickly judge if others have found a link useful.

As always, your feedback is welcome.

Oh, and MathsSearch is back and working properly. MathsSearch uses a custom Google search to search over 150 maths related sites.

Here, the new school year begins on Tuesday. Can you make 2013 a year of sharing?

Now that we have a National Curriculum in Australia, let’s make 2013 the Year of Sharing.

This week…

The first for 2013.

For the new year, the sites have a new look and functionality, feedback is welcomed.

If you haven’t visited the site recently, there is a new look across MathsLinks, MathsFaculty, MathsKit and MathsClass.

The redesign is still a work in progress, and the main aim is to make it easier to use MathsLinks and MathsFaculty.

Feedback is welcome.

Some seasonal links this week, enjoy the break. Merry Christmas.

Keep an eye out for new look sites soon.

This is part 2 of my electronic worksheets for Consumer Arithmetic. Part 2 focuses on Spending Money, in particular: profit and loss, discounts, purchasing, best buys and buying on terms (hire purchase). (Part 1 focused on earning money)

Just one lonely link this week… a Christmas tree logic puzzle. Year 8 stuck with it, some of them getting a better score than me on their first go.

Nearing the end of the year, I’ve updated a previous MathsClass blog post from 2008 with additional supporting material to make this nice design. Files available on MathsFaculty.

There are other end of term activities on MathsClass and design activities on MathsFaculty.

MathsLinks has reached 599 links!

Thank-you to the people who completed the short survey last week, looks like this weekly summary is helpful, so I’ll continue to produce it.

Since May, I have been posting a weekly summary of the links and resources added to my other sites, MathsLinks and MathsFaculty, calling it “MathsClass This Week”. A quick poll: (viewing via an RSS feed or email, you probably need to visit the site to complete the poll)

This week on MathsLinks

A small update this week as we get to the end of the Spring holidays.

Please help me by completing this survey to get some ideas about improving the MathsLinks interface.

A lot of links and files this week…

Did you go to the 2012 MANSW Conference? If you don’t have a blog, consider leaving your reflections as a comment here.

This week’s highlight, check out the GeoGebra HowTos from Nordin Zuber on MathsFaculty.

This looks interesting… the GeoGebra for the iPad project is looking for funding on Kickstarter. Currently only 25% funded.

Thanks for the comments on last week’s post Being too helpful?.

First up, here on MathsClass, I’ve raised a question about being too helpful. Do you have any comments? Nordin’s comment is a good read.

A foldable for reviewing the Rules of Differentiation. Click the preview to see the full version.

Year 11 Mathematics have one of their three periods a week, last period on Fridays. Of course, they’re not highly motivated at that time.

The other week, we folded parabolas, I called it “Arts and Craft Friday”.

The next week, they surprised me by asking what we were doing for “Arts and Craft Friday”… I had nothing!

I suspect that as you find great resources on the net, many time, like me, you still have a need to scaffold an activity around that resource… maybe resulting in the creation of supplementary material.

This week, along with many colleagues, I heard Dan Meyer present “How can we design the ideal learning experience for students?” Great inspiration as we head into the second half of the year. Were you there? What did you learn/think?

School holidays… it’s been quiet.

Looking forward to seeing Dan Meyer present in Sydney this week, looks like there are still places at the afternoon session.

Most teachers have a USB stick full of their teaching resources… similarly most schools have a file server with a Mathematics folder chocked full of stuff that has been randomly downloaded, scanned or created.

But, what about web-sites? I’ve seen many Word docs named “websites.doc” and shake my head. At a professional development course I went to, the presenter had addresses for web-sites he used in a text file, I suggested he use MathsLinks, but his reasoning was sound – he had the links with him with other resources for a lesson. Social bookmarking sites like Pinboard (my recommendation, here are my maths bookmarks) are great, but I found categorising on MathsLinks suited me even better, then I made it public.

Now I’m adding some features to MathsLinks which are a little bit old-school, but will hopefully make it more useful when programming and sharing links with colleagues:

Save link to your computer – this will download a “url” file to your computer, a shortcut to the web-site. Double click it on your machine and you will be taken to the site. (Mac users, it will open Safari, no option)
Print to PDF – downloads a PDF with the essentials about the web-site with links to the site on MathsLinks as well as direct to the site.

Try it on these links…

MathsStarters

Yesterday, I announced that I added a Maths Bingo game to MathsStarters. Since then, I’ve added Expansion (algebraic) and Unit conversion games.

Elsewhere…

I reckon Maths Bingo is a great starter, ender or in-betweener…

First up, a visual refresh to MathsKit. I hope it’s easier to find the best resources in each category. A more obvious menu and each category is initially limited to 5 links with a click to show more. What gets in the top five depends on “recommends” a link has received.

On MathsLinks, I tweaked the NSW K-10 Mathematics Syllabus page to include Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 outcomes. I’ve also brought all the outcomes onto that page in hopefully a easy to use way.

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’ve updated the Quick Quiz app on MathsStarters.

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

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!

Here are some resources for the new year…

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

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

Welcome to the new look MathsClass site.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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).

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.

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.