MathsClass

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.

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

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!

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.

An excuse to use chocolate in a maths lesson…

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.