Category Archives: Lesson Ideas

Index Laws : Division

Get PowerPoint here Completing index law week here. I added some whiteboard questions/rapid fire questions as I felt I didn’t have enough build up. As in the last few PowerPoints I spent time thinking about the questions I ask and the skills required. An SSDD type question. I need to add more of these to… Read More »

Indices : Power Law

Get the lesson PowerPoint here. Going with Jo Morgan’s suggestion of doing the power law after multiplying rather than after dividing. I wrote some challenging questions. There’s also a hinge question and some timed questions. I also moved on to changing bases. Because it’s really easy and a lovely way to introduce the idea of… Read More »

Multiplying indices

Get the PowerPoint here Again, a lot of stuff is stolen from Jo Morgan’s great work. I mean, I’m never going to make something as beautiful as this. I wrote some questions. I think they’re quite nice. And I put some discussion slides in again

Index Notation

Download the PowerPoint here. So … I can’t claim that I’ve done much original work here. Most of this is stolen from Jo Morgan’s indices in depth presentation. Sorry Jo! Normally I make a lot of stuff from scratch, but Jo’s work here is so good that I can’t really improve on it. If you… Read More »

Applications of Pythagoras

Download the lesson here. I find telling pupils the Pythagoras rules and then getting them to solve ‘problems’ isn’t enough. Often, the unstructured problem solving can be overwhelming for students. Opinions vary. You might think that I’ve structured this waaay too much, and removed too much thinking from the students. It would be interesting to… Read More »

Pythagoras’ Theorem

Download the lesson here Download the worksheets here [1] [2] There’s two lessons here. Which is the hypotenuse? A worksheet with lots of different orientations of triangles. Moving on to finding the missing side, no matter if it’s long or short. Something a bit more fun Finishes, as always, with a five quick questions learning… Read More »

Ratio problems

Download the lesson here. Just a load of interesting (ish) ratio problems to work though. I used bar modelling. I am increasingly into bar modelling for KS3, although I’m still not massively convinced when it comes to negatives. I call these ‘reverse’ ratio problems. I don’t know if that’s the correct terminology. I have been… Read More »

Sharing in a ratio

Download the lesson here. Something I’ve wanted to get around to completing for a while. I love ratio and I’ve got into doing a little bit of bar modelling. There’s some LOVELY questions in the White Rose Barvember stuff. This lesson has an example problem pair and some mini-whiteboard work. When I taught this lesson,… Read More »

Updated resource : Solving linear inequalities

Download the lesson here. Completely revamped lesson. Includes an example problem pair, lots of mini-whiteboard work, a regular activity (which is still kind of rubbish to be honest. I could do with thinking about these questions more) and a nice little codebreaker. I prefer setting my code breakers out like this. I find if you… Read More »

Regrouping

Download the word file here. I’ve been reading Peter Mattock’s book Visible Maths. I’m only two chapters in but I’m really enjoying it. Visual representations is something I haven’t really learnt much about. I’ve dabbled in bar modelling, but I’m a stranger to things like Cuisenaire rods. So much so that I had to read… Read More »