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End of term activities. Darth Vader-like curve on WolframAlpha Other additions to the original post include Bingo which works really well. You might like to try a team game? Try The Workers of Zen. (ATM publish books of team games) and I must mention A Little Problem for the Holidays! PacMan by Alec Schultz on Desmos If those WolframAlpha equations are a bit much for younger students they could try something simpler using the Desmos graphing calculator; look at Alec Schultz’s PacMan for example, you could just show your students how to restrict the domain for straight lines, maybe show them the equation of a circle and see what they can produce! See also – The last few days of term.

Like this: Like Loading... Related For Students.... With older students in mind including those about to enter higher education, there are many free resources available to support students in their study of Mathematics. In "For students" Happy Easter A reminder that you can just type a function into Google and its graph will be returned! Graph Art. Darth Vader-like curve on WolframAlpha PacMan on Desmos by Alec Schultz If those equations are a bit much you could try something simpler using the Desmos graphing calculator; for example look at Alec Schultz’s PacMan. Try some Art on Desmos! Select the image, reload page if necessary. To experiment click here or on the image above to see how this was created and experiment yourself.

Lovely evening by Petr Feidler on Desmos Desmos have a whole gallery to inspire you! Like this: Like Loading... Related Happy Christmas! (Click on the image to go to the page). In "Graphs" Top >10 Mathematics Websites for Students One of the most popular posts on my blog for teachers is Top >10 Mathematics Websites. In "Tools & Apps" Exploring Straight Lines If you are feeling a little unsure on identifying the equation of a straight line then use this Desmos graph and experiment by changing the gradient, intercept or points marked on…

End of term activities. Bingo. I first came across Mathsbox.org.uk when looking at some resources on TES (TES requires registration but all resources are free). Games of Bingo have been a great success this year with my Year 8 class and also my Year 11 students. Each time the students have been highly motivated and asked if they could continue playing to try and achieve ‘Full House’. With Year 8 we used Bingo games for practising directed numbers and substitution in algebra; with Year 11 a Bingo game provided a great way to revise completing the square. At the moment all the resources on this site (except the loop cards) are free to use. For a collection of online Bingo games try these on MathsStarters.net. There are many free Bingo resources on TES; note how the search can be narrowed by Key Stage. Year 8 – after playing Bingo using the Mathsbox Bingo Resources: ‘It’s great fun, everyone enjoys it. ‘The bingo is a great idea as it is fun and good for the class and still teaches and helps the students learn.’

Related. Top Posts. End of term activities. See also Christmas and Easter. What to do for those last lessons? No videos – though I could make an exception for the counting chimps, a video I was introduced to by Alex Bellos at the SSAT conference which he included in his session and shows the astonishing recall of a chimp – compare the human! Bingo always works really well. A team game? I must mention A Little Problem for the Holidays! Some Mathematical games and puzzles perhaps? The Set Game which is a daily puzzle is set in The New York Times.

Or try some pencil and paper games such as Sprouts, described very clearly here by the Iowa State Math Department. Always popular with our staff and students is the game of Countdown. See also Christmas and Easter. On a similar theme try Make 24, a Wisweb applet. For a main activity a Tarsia puzzle provides an engaging activity. Craig Barton and the TES Maths Panel have put together a collection of TES Resources that would work well at the end of term. Darth Vader-like curve on WolframAlpha. Geoboard Activities. National Strategies – Exemplification Examples: Geometry and Measures I have always found the above task, suggested in the National Strategies exemplification examples (click on the above image for the pdf) an excellent one when looking at types of triangles and their properties. Students are required to find the number of unique triangles on a 3×3 grid. The task can be extended by asking students how many unique triangles there are on a 4×4 grid.

A good discussion can be had on being systematic in approach. The next time I teach it I will certainly use a Geoboard. Two excellent resources are the Nrich Geoboard or this one from the Math Learning Centre. The illustrations below used the Beluga Geoboard tool which seems to be unavailable at the moment. Beluga – Geoboard tool The tool is very easy to use: Select the lowest button from the menu, drag the ends wherever you want and stretch the band round any of the pins. What a great way to investigate properties of quadrilaterals too. Related. 77100000000 is the….. I’ll start this week with a quiz question! Click on the image to submit your response and see the answer. So why start with a quiz question?! I have just had an excellent few days at the TSM conference where I was delighted to meet Douglas Butler, the excellent tutors and so many teachers.

Craig Barton’s quiz on Tuesday evening, after my own ‘Musings of a Maths Blogger’ where I showed delegates some of my favourite things has put me in a mood for quizzes! I would also like to remind everyone how brilliant Google forms are for gathering feedback, we have used many at school for gathering responses from students and staff. (See this page for some survey tools including Google Forms, links include Tom Barrett’s Interesting Ways to use Google Forms in the Classroom and a comprehensive manual from Sarah Eaton). Craig’s tweets will give you some idea of the huge number of ideas shared and the expertise of tutors and delegates. Autograph Activity – Craig Barton Like this: Like Loading...

Related. A Quiz Question! Musings of a Maths Blogger. A tour of this blog – some highlights. Note the hyperlinks on each slide, some of the images are also hyperlinks. (pdfs: Musings of a Maths Blogger Musings of a Maths Blogger v2 (min size). Like this: Like Loading... Related 77100000000 is the..... I'll start this week with a quiz question! In "Mathematics" Forgotten Posts of 2011 All over the blogosphere bloggers are posting about their top posts of the year - myself included! Back to School! It's that time of year again - the beginning of the new school year and teachers everywhere are thinking about the kind of learning environment they want their classrooms to… Calculus – Techniques for Differentiation. Several high quality resources are available online to help you practise your differentiation.

Resources The mathcentre site includes extensive resources. The quick reference leaflets which are available on numerous topics are very clearly written and succinct. There are also teach yourself booklets, revision booklets, videos and diagnostic tests. Math Centre – Product Rule Math Centre – Quotient Rule or for the resources structured as a course try Mathtutor.

Calculus workbook from Plymouth University Plymouth University have an excellent series of workbooks with examples and exercises, note the dropdown menus for each topic. You can always check your work on WolframAlpha: (More on WolframAlpha) Like this: Like Loading... Related Questions - lots of questions! The way to improve your mathematical skills is to do lots of questions (then do some more!) With 3 comments Integration - applets If you are learning about integration, there are some excellent online resources to help you. In "Calculus" Mathematics Learning & Web 2.0. It started with a tweet. I noticed a tweet from Darren Kuropatwa.. Here is what Darren was referring to, a video made by Desmos on exploring the sine function: Sine function created on Desmos by Darren Kuropatwa Darren has recreated that graph here. Now I rather like that and thinking it would be useful for my revision session this week with a GCSE (UK age15-16) class, decided I would simplify it so it was more suitable for my students.

I changed the units to degrees and restricted the transformations more so it was more in line with our specification (these students are studying for a second GCSE in Mathematics – AQA Further Mathematics level 2). Along came Desmos having seen the Twitter conversation.. and look at the awesome graph Desmos created which shows a sine curve and a transformed curve clearly illustrating how each point is changed. We could for example translate the curve 2 units parallel to the y axis: Using the slider for angle we see very clearly that each y coordinate is increased by 2.

Brilliant! Related. Desmos Graphing Calculator. Dollops of Feedback. The most powerful single modification that enhances achievement is feedback. The simplest prescription for improving education must be “dollops of feedback”.Hattie, J.A. (1992). Measuring the effects of schooling. Australian Journal of Education (see page 9). Marking the examination papers for my Year 8 students (UK age 12-13) has made me think about the feedback I want to give them.

I want to help them understand any misconceptions they have and what steps they need to make to improve. Having marked the set of papers I can see common misconceptions so I thought this time I would provide my students with a list that they could traffic light as we review their examination. I will also provide them with a form they can complete with the possible marks for each question so they can write in their own marks. The list has obviously been designed for this particular test, but in case it is useful for providing ideas, you can download it here:Exam review checklist (Excel) Further References. Thoughts This Week… Desmos Graphing Calculator. Update – note that all the Desmos posts now have their own page. Checking Twitter this morning I noticed Richard Byrne’s post (Free technology for Teachers) on the new graphing calculator from Desmos.

This is easy to use and the ability to set up a page then save the url means teachers can set up pages for students to explore families of graphs. (See Explore Graphs.) Variables can easily be changed to see the effect on the graph, for example click on a, b or c to change the value of the variable and note the change in the parabola. There are several examples already set up, for example one could choose the vertex form for a parabola from the examples list. Inequalities are handled very well, unlike many free graph plotters it is easy to plot lines of the form x=k. It is possible to show several graphs on the same diagram, so transformations could easily be explored.

This YouTube video provides an introduction to the calculator. For other graph plotters online see the resources here. Like this: What’s in a name? Share coke with Sophie, photo by Sophie Young My daughter Sophie got me thinking about popular names recently with this picture. With Coke’s current Share a Coke campaign it is possible to find a Coke with your name on the labe l if your na me happens to be in the top 150 popular names as decided by an ‘independent expert’. Some of those names can be found in the lists compiled by the Office for National Statistics .

This pdf details the key findings from the data and includes Excel files to download various tables. The ONS describe groups of users and uses of baby name statistics which includes those involved in the manufacture and sale of named items (like coke!). I think teachers and students can also be users of the baby name statistics because in my experience it goes down very well with students!

Students might be interested to see how their school compares to the ONS data. Further websites offering Statistics on names: Like this: Like Loading... Top >10 Mathematics Websites for Students. One of the most popular posts on my blog for teachers is Top >10 Mathematics Websites . It struck me that it might be useful to think about my top recommendations for students. Using some categories here again gives me the excuse to mention more than 10!

All these resources are free to use. Francesco Bondi’s art work on Desmos. Click the image to see the graph on Desmos. For an online graph plotter try the excellent Desmos graphing calculator , it is very easy to use and allows you to save your graphs if you sign up. (Facebook is one option you can use to sign in to Desmos). For checking your work WolframAlpha is so useful, it is free to use for as many queries as you want; additionally with free use you can get step-by-step solutions for three problems a day. For reference materials see the various resources on the Reference page which includes links to online dictionaries. If you like to watch videos to help you learn then you may find some useful resources on the Videos page . Top >10 Mathematics Websites. Checked and updated – August 2013 This post remains one of the most popular on this blog.

So – time for a revisit and an update. Most of the original post still stands – a few additions rather than deletions. Any post claiming top 10 or >10 in my case is clearly the author’s top 10, not the top 10! These are my top >10 because I really do use them – a lot – in the classroom! …and a slide show to summarize… (download PowerPoint file: top-10-mathematics-websites-v3 (pdf version: top-10-mathematics-websites-v3 ) (Some hyperlinks seem to be behaving inconsistently in Slideshare). I was asked about my own top ten Mathematics websites, this request and remembering Edna Sackson’s comments on her ’10 Ways…’ series reminded me of the various ‘Top (insert number here) Mathematics Websites’ posts I have read; all of them have left me with the thought that so many excellent sites are missing from such lists.

There is a version of this post written for students on Mathematics for Students. Like this: Scratch. Scratch, from MIT is object-oriented programming language which is very easy to get started with as there is now a new release of the platform availble entirely in a browser; no program downloads are required. The interface is intuitive and easy to use; extensive help is available including a very clear Getting Started Guide and a set of Scratch Cards with clear instructions which will help you learn new Scratch code. Note the Scratch For Educators section. As you can see from the sprite’s path the above program continues as follows: Now that’s not a very efficient program! Scratch – drawing an octagon We could add some sound, change the pen colour or shade, learn about variables and generally have some fun! Click the image then ‘See Inside’ at the top of the screen. Try experimenting with this program which uses variables for the number of lines to draw and the angle to turn through.

It strikes me that Scratch could be used for many topics, bearings included. Like this: Like Loading... Mathematics Blogs. Spot the Mistake. Thoughts this week … Statistics Resources. Mini-Tests. Revision Time! Why should I memorize something when I know where to find it? Happy Easter. Some happy discoveries this week… Brilliant Questions. Mathematics, Learning and Web 2.0. Explore Straight Lines. After World Maths Day…. Mathematics Posters. Inequalities. Inequalities. Graphs and Transformations. Bloomin’ Mathematics. Send a math-o-gram … Mathematics – Starters and Plenaries | A variety of resources to start and end lessons. Here’s the question…. World Maths Day. Misconceptions in Mathematics. Here’s the diagram…. This year I will …. Happy New Year! Happy 2013. Top 20. More Lovely Puzzles! For (Online) Stationery Geeks! Math Teachers At Play #57 | So I Teach Math and Coach? Christmas is coming – part 2! Is zero an even number? Mathematics Learning & Web 2.0. Crunchies 2012 - Nominate Desmos in the Best Education Startup category.

Christmas is coming – again! Busy marking! Online Utilites. Bingo! Desmos – latest version. Some recent discoveries… Some resources used in my classes…. Polar Coordinates. Negative Numbers – Resources. Ntinuity correction. Polynomials – long division. Nrich – new look. Screencast by @ColleenYoung from Screenr.com. Solving equations with balance-strategy: game. Equation solver for solving harder linear equations - Waldomaths. Equation solver for solving simple linear equations - Waldomaths. Algebra Balance Scales - Negatives. Algebra Balance Scales. Ltd: Equation Buster All. SolvingEquations. Unit 8 Section 2 : Linear Equations with Brackets. Unit 12 Section 4 : Linear Equations 2. Unit 12 Section 3 : Linear Equations 1.

Lineqncalc. Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine.