I like maths activities that make students think, and enable them to develop their mathematical communication skills while building confidence in problem solving skills.
Everything here is the result of working in schools for over 14 years with a wide range of students.
I like maths activities that make students think, and enable them to develop their mathematical communication skills while building confidence in problem solving skills.
Everything here is the result of working in schools for over 14 years with a wide range of students.
Investigations are a great way to consolidate skills, develop reasoning and promote resilience. Developing mathematical communication builds confidence and aids the learning journey.
5 mathematical investigations for use with students aged 11-15.
Investigating primes
Investigating polyhedra
Investigating routes
Investigating perimeter (and area)
Investigating combinations
These one page investigations can be printed and distributed, or displayed on an interactive whiteboard. Alternatively, use the ideas as inspiration for investigations suitable for your groups of students.
These investigations often lead to exploring ideas beyond the curriculum, allowing students to make deep connections between maths topic areas and to other subject areas.
These investigations have been used many times with students of various ages and abilities. The tasks can be worked on solo, in pairs or in teams.
This 98 page book contains tried and tested problems/solutions that can be used to promote mathematical curiosity in the classroom.
The book describes seven detailed investigation style lessons that explore thought provoking and resilience building activities. These lessons build on topics first seen at Key Stage 3 along with ideas that go beyond the curriculum.
This would be ideal reading for NQTs and ECTs.
The lesson scenarios contain:
problem statements,
differentiation strategies,
lines of questioning,
theoretical and pedagogical insights.
3 data handling investigations for use with KS3 students, or even with GCSE classes.
Exam grades data project
Weather data project
School journey data project
Each project has instructions and data sets ready to use. Each data set is also saved as a spreadsheet in case students want to do computer based investigations.
10 Quick Quadratic Questions…
Ideal for revision or assessment for learning at Key Stage 4.
Can be used as a starter or as part of a main task.
Printable to A5 or display on a whiteboard.
Answers provided with room to annotate as needed.
(Has been used with Year 9 also on a few occasions)
Altogether 10 pages of revision questions.
Each page has four revision questions related to sequences:
Tasks A 1-5 form a set
Tasks B 1-5 form a set
Typically, I’d get a class to do set A, check answers then repeat with set B a week later.
These could be used throughout the year or with other tasks as part of revision.
I’ve also printed and cut into cards, shuffled and worked through in teams.
NB: These have been used with year 7 and year 8 classes.
