Monthly Archives: June 2016

Why did Assessment for Learning fail?

Some statistical graphs presented without comment

I’m going to admit something: I often don’t enjoy teaching constructions. It’s fiddly. No matter how much you demonstrate whole-class, there’s no substitute for sitting with someone and showing them how to hold and move the compass. One solution is experts. Getting competent students to pair up and help less competent ones. Another solution is… Read More »

The UK's cheapest mortgage?

HSBC launches Britain’s first fixed-rate mortgage below 1% [The Guardian] The bank is offering customers the chance to lock in for two years at an interest rate of 0.99%, but they need a deposit of at least 35% and will pay a product fee of £1,499. The question then is, is this cheaper that most… Read More »

Constructions game

I hate teaching constructions. It’s so fiddly. Here’s a little game to make it a little nicer. A little exploration of trying to make shapes using only lines and circles. It’s fun.

Balancing Equations vs Sign Change

I was showing a fellow teacher DUDAMATH on Friday. It was all going well until this teacher, who I respect greatly, recoiled in horror. When you drag a term in an equation in DUDAMATH, and drop it on the other side, it changes the sign of the term. 4x becomes -4x. ‘Next you’ll be moving… Read More »

The Progression Of Addition and Subtraction

I don’t know about you, but as a secondary school teacher I’ve not often thought about teaching some of the maths fundamentals. We assume students can already add, subtract, multiply and divide single digit numbers. Secondary teachers don’t pay enough credit to primary teachers, who have the critical job of embedding concepts like place value.… Read More »

DUDAMATH

I have found this. Makes patterns. Shows equations. Solves equations in an interactive way. Has some statistics stuff. Can’t believe I’ve never seen this before. Setting up an equation and then showing how to rearrange it visually is powerful. Watch the hint videos under the ‘?’ on the right hand side of the page to… Read More »

Rio 2016 Maths

An attempt to follow in someone else’s footsteps. rio2016 [pdf] A PDF/worksheet thing about the Rio Olympics. Eight pages covering a range of maths content. Kind of pointless as we won’t be at school whilst the Rio Olympics are on. I mainly did this for a little bit of practice making nice stuff. If you use… Read More »