Crack the Lock Activity

Here is an activity I use to encourage the students to work through some question in class.

It does require some initial monetary outlay, but it can be used for a very long time.

You will need some sort of locking mechanism, a padlock or safe, that requires a three (or four) digit pass code to unlock.

It should be visible to the class, It works better than a virtual one, although if you could find a digital one professionally done then that might be quite interesting.

Have a prize inside, and sometimes wrap it in an extension activity, in case they crack your code early.

I have a lock which can be reset to different combinations, you can get them for under £4 from Ebay or Amazon. I have also been trying to find a safe deposit box that works with a padlock, but yet to find one, so I bought some chain links from Homebase, for about £2. I then wrapped it round a normal tin and this is what I get:

The worksheets are then designed to give three numbers which relate to the code. I do not check their work until after they have tried the code. If a student tries to guess the code, we can have a discussion on permutations and chance, and the only rule is that you have to wait three minutes before your next guess.

The worksheets cover many misconceptions as they include true or false statements. So some are straightforward, whilst others can encourage debate.

Of course, locking the safe back up so other finishers can guess the code is fairly straightforward.

Those that finish first are asked to note down in their books three key facts that helped them solve the code, and then they can support other teams. So far I have seen relatively little cheating.

Here are the link to some sets of questions, starting with percentages and fractions, I will add more as I do them in lesson. Please feel free to create and share your own.

The worksheets


I actually think you could use a plastic bag as a safe: Put a box in the bag that is big enough so that if the bag handles were locked together, you couldn't get the box out. Sure, you could rip the plastic bag, but if you have nice students I don't think that would matter!

Santa's Route - Lines of Equation

I haven't posted for a while - I will be uploading a resource soon that I use as a way to keep interest in practising and perfecting work.

For now, here is a simple Christmas resource.

Maths is always fun, so doing fun lessons in the last week of term doesn't really change for me. (although I do let my prize winning class from the mistakes chart watch Flatland)

I do like some Christmas themes to my work though. Just like this post from solve my maths.

Here is a simple task on working with and finding equations of lines.

There are two tasks, and the first one is differentiated to allow easy entry.


Basically, Santa needs to plot his 2D Cartesian route between houses (obviously) and does it by plotting equations.

In the harder task: you are required to find the houses, having been given some information about the lines that need to be plotted.

All the documents are available here - including answers for the harder task.

Percentages with Dragons!

I don't have many differing resources for Percentages. It's probably up there with basic operations as the most important part of Mathematics to our learners, but since this is the case, there are bags of resources online to support with this.

I have two resources to add that are a little bit different:

Some higher level thinking and problem solving with percentages:

Next is my Dragon's Den percentages: It is for reviewing / revising percentages and there is a difficult one (with various compound interest calculations) and a more simpler one for practising basic increase and decrease.

Basically - the students invest a portion of their 10k into a choice of three companies. They can choose to invest in two if they like, but not all three.

After everyone has written in their investment choice on the attached sheet, they then work out the money they have made or lost. There is an example on the sheet, but I think it relates only to the higher powerpoint. Also, be warned that I teach to a point where we use multipliers, so if you don't do that you might have to tweak your answer sheet.

The biggest obstacle I have run into when running this activity is that students don't carry over the money correctly into the next round. 

All the companies exist (or have been pitched in the den) - and if I have given them a green, then they have had investment and may have been successful.

I trust my students to check each others work each round, and we take time to go through the workings at the end of each round. They will also never run out of money - as they just lose a percentage of their investment.

The best round is number two - none of the investment opportunities are worthwhile. The students did not need to invest in any if they don't want!

All the bits are available here:

Percentages - Dragon's Den and Other Problems


Finally - I'm sure you all know this clip: but it is a great plenary. The teacher doesn't know - but does anyone in your class?

The video is available via the link above as well.

Prime Numbers, Factors and Prime Factors

Here are some resources and ideas I use when teaching topics involving Primes and Prime Factors.

There are a few ways of spotting prime numbers - including Sieve of Eratosthenes, which I still think is a bit forced.

I like the links to Area (which they may not make straight away, depending on ability). I recommend doing this using multilink cubes: Idea taken from Don Steward

I give 25 cubes and ask the students to record how many ways they could rearrange cubes to represent the numbers from 1 - 25:

Then this leads to discussions about Factors, Square Numbers and what it takes to be a prime number.

If you want to go onto Prime factorisation, then try it a different way - show how powerful prime numbers can be. Set a target - make it a game - after a while allow them to choose one more number to add to the list. Ask them why they wanted that number..

Then comes lots of different activities:

Follow Me Cards - Squares and Primes

Rally Coach for HCF and LCM

Collective Memory - have the students copy the image down from memory and then fill in the numbers when done.

I can't believe I have never heard of Shikaku until this week. It is also referred to as rectangles. It's so perfect to consolidate factors (i.e. knowing that 10 could be one strip of ten or two strips of five) and also help with Area too.

This website allows you to choose loads of different levels of difficulty, meaning differentiation is easy! Also can be done on the website (with timings for extra competition) or printed. There are also a bunch of apps too with the game.

My last resource this post is Factors bingo - if you haven't played this before I will be surprised, but nevertheless here are the rules:

Other places to look for resources on this include, as usual, Don Steward's median blog.

Also check out some good Factor resources on resourceaholic

My last comment is really about selling this topic, particularly primes. There are lots of interesting research and books about prime numbers, and whilst much of it would go over many student's heads, I still think there is value in you discussing that these things are out there. Sound enthused about things you have read, the fact that there are monetary prizes for finding primes, or that internet encryption is based on the idea that no-one has found a quick way to check if a number is a prime number.

Thanks - any other good links then let me know!

Number - Place Value Resources

One of the easier topics in the curriculum - Place Value - can still perplex many students, particularly when talking about the values of the digits after the decimal point.

I still have students who struggle with ordering decimals and calculating which is closest to a certain value. I also come across students who struggle with the terminology.

Place value is one of those topics than can be addressed through mini activities throughout the year, and it always helps to reinforce the topic - even with high ability students.

I like this as a starter:

The discussion is important afterwards - question their strategies. There is also a harder set as well, which involve decimals. Hopefully some discussion about place value will occur.

Link - Place Value Starter

Another useful way to introduce some 'fun' (of course it is all fun) is with the 'Place Value Game' . There are many variations of this, I don't claim this as my own by any stretch. Mine has a full class version (which I usually play last lesson of term) and a two player version.

Link - Place Value Game


I move onto a Prezi which zooms into a unit to show that it can then broken down into smaller denominations.

We talk about notation then - which one is called what, and why. I think it is super important to explain what 1/10 is. It is a wow moment to many that 0.1 actually shows one tenth. 0.6 is six tenths so 6/10.

One way to consolidate is to play Place Value Bingo. This is a sneaky resource I made. Its a fairly straightforward Bingo - but great for assessing progress. If you play to Full House - which isn't long at all - then you'll end up with 1 in 7 of your class winning at the same time. If you then play one more slide - everyone will win.
So... if there are any students who don't have Bingo - make a note, tell them unlucky, and you know they need some support.

Link - Place Value Bingo

Don Stewards Blog as always, has some good resources with place value and decimals, but the best are found under Decimals labels rather than place value.

I particularly like Decimal Nim:

Finally, two worksheets I use, mainly for lower ability - or an easy early in the year homework.

Rearranging decimals given the text, or spotting the missing place value - is actually done quite poorly in a lot of cases. Something different to many other questions.


Comparing decimals worksheet - not particularly all singing or dancing - but it does a job. I like the extension at the bottom of this sheet - and the rearranging letters section spells out MR HILL SMELLS, so you might want to change that. I tell my class that I got the sheet from a fellow teacher, and that I don't know the answer. Bit of acting when I hear the answer and it generates some cheap laughs :)

Any other ideas out there?

Maths Across The Curriculum - English

All teachers are now under pressure to include some elements of basic English and Maths across all subjects. Let me be clear here - this is not about improving spelling or reading within the maths scheme of work. My aim on this section of blog is to give some ideas to actually team teach for a few lessons, giving equal space to, in this case, English and Maths.



Idea #1

Debating Maths

This is great for a mixed class - or one where you have students who often say things like "what is the point in doing this?" "when will I use this?"

Debate Questions:

Is maths useful when you leave school?
Is maths the most important subject at school?
Is maths fun?

I'm eager to hear of any other ideas, but the first one is what I will be leading with. By giving the students time in English to learn about persuasive argumentative writing, allowing them to research and find out themselves exactly why maths is important, can not only lead to good collaboration between subjects, but will hopefully encourage them to find all the reasons why maths rocks.


Idea #2

A new education minister has decided that Maths will be scrapped from the curriculum as it was his least favourite subject. By using examples of real life applications of maths learnt in school, write a formal letter to the minister against the plans.

Idea #3 - could link in to Food Tech as well

For a cook book, explain with clear instructions how to chance the recipe ingredients for4 people to 6 people, or to 10 people, or to n people. It should be clear enough for anyone to understand. With an example.

Idea #4

Pick a persuasive argument that can be backed up by statistics, Chelsea are the best team in Europe, One Direction are better than the Beatles, Films with female heroes are worse than male heroes. Hollister is overpriced for it's market, Beats headphones are selling faster than Dr.Dre's music etc. The school is getting better because grades are getting better etc..
In the Maths lessons, find and analyse data, understand data representation. In English, create a presentation, letter or whatever to highlight the statistics.

Idea #5

Maths fun with English language

Pick two or three novels, pick a sample page in each. What is the average word length on these pages? What average is better to use? Does Charles Dickens write more, longer words than JK Rowling? is their a difference because of the market audience?
How many similes in a chapter? How many uses of adverbs etc.
What about lengths of books, does that have an effect on popularity? If you wanted to write a classic novel, what length should it be?
Just for a bit more fun - Classics Vs Modern, UK v US, who uses the letter z more often? and so on.....

Idea #6

It's a bit obvious, but writing a newspaper article from the point of a mathematical discovery - or just
about a revelation on how to answer fractions.

 

 

 

But then again, who reads newspapers now anyway?

 

 

Why not some successive tweets from Pythagoras, or a facebook profile etc...

 

Idea #7

 

My colleague @MissArcherMaths ran a cross curricular activity with English involving promoting their own supermarket chain. They included offers and promotions and linked it to their presentation.

The Yr7s loved it - they had their own stalls and I played the Inspector, grilling them about their supermarket offers.

 

 

As usual - please fill me in with any ideas you might use to link the subjects together.

 

 

ACE starters and not fearing mistakes

So at my recent school, the department were extremely passionate about entry activities. These were starters that were given as students entered the room, so that they immediately had something to focus on.

They had to follow a few rules:

1. Must be printed - So that each student has something in their hand, and avoids situations where students have to keep looking up to the IWB.
2. Must have opportunity to write their name - no matter how poor the student's ability, most can fill in a name, therefore they can all be getting on straight away.
3. Should be accessible - No questions should be asked (clearly the first few times you run this, it may need some explaining, but the questions should start off as easy as possible for that class ability)
4. Should not have an end - This was tricky for me - there should never be a point where the student has finished their entry.
5. It must be worthwhile - Students won't buy into it if the teacher just bins the work later in the lesson.

At first, I was creating differentiated, thought provoking (yet easy), printable entries, for the start of all my lessons. It took me about 45 minutes to create each one, and we used it for 5 minutes a lesson. It was painful.
After many attempts, and poor ideas, I finally landed on one I liked. I call it my ACE entry.

Answer
Communicate
Extension


Each entry follows a similar pattern, answering easy questions (based on the class ability, I had ones that ranged from addition to factorising quadratics) followed by a matching activity, which helped students who liked to self check. When going through this, I quickly reeled off answers, or went round the room asking for answers. If anyone tried the "didn't get to it", I simply asked them to work it out then and came back to them in a few more questions.

Then the communicate question, which encouraged the student to communicate effectively certain definitions, or explain where a misconception has occurred. An example being "Explain why 3.4 x 10 is not 3.40"
This is great to open up debate at the start, and also push for better answers from the more advanced students:

S: because it is 34
T: why is it 34?
S2: because the numbers moved to the left.
T: What did they do wrong?
S3: added a zero instead.
T: Why did they do that?
etc etc...


Finally, the extension, which I rarely mark in lesson, but mark when looking in books. I get them to stick the A5 sheet in their books and give feedback about it. If a student is not getting enough done at the start of the lesson, I ask them to complete it as part of homework. I also value it with praise stickers that just highlight completing the entry to a high standard.

Now, there are 63 of them in this zipped file, enough to last you till Christmas at least. Only a few have repeated parts, and some are harder than others. Each one is duplicated so you can print two on one sheet easily from the print menu.

ACE Starters

Warning - I will have made mistakes on these, having made them generally between the hours of 11pm and 1am.


Which leads me to my second point. When I started teaching, one of my irrational fears was that I'd make too many mistakes on the board, as I am quite clumsy sometimes with my working.
To combat it - I faced it full on, and created Mr. Hill's Correction chart.

I make the joke that through the year I will put in mistakes, and if they can spot them then they get a point for their class (of course I never do it on purpose). I display this poster proudly on the wall. I also explain how it is fine to make mistakes and that is how we learn. My student's love catching me out and you will often hear in the middle of my class "correction!" from an over zealous student.

So embrace the many errors there may be on these entries!

Viral Mathematics - The Ice Bucket Challenge

It is important for me as a teacher that I can relate mathematics to the current world, and to a certain extent, ensure my students don't see me as some out of touch weirdo.

This year's big craze, the Ice Bucket Challenge, allows us teachers to investigate how quickly a good idea can go viral, and more importantly, raise huge amounts of money in the process.

As we prepare students to go into the new world, wouldn't it be great for them to see the potential the internet has on creating incredible amounts of fundraising, whilst also doing some maths :)

There are already some great maths posts out there about this phenomenon, including When will I get nominated?  and  How long till the whole world is nominated?

This is more about an actual lesson based on the viral campaign. It gives us a good platform to discuss powers, and for me I will use it to reinforce power notation (particularly for the weaker students)

I have tried to plan this in a way that is accessible to most secondary Mathematics' students, with a real emphasis on extension.

It is also a creative lesson, as you finish by encouraging them to create their own idea of a viral fundraising campaign and you can have them model it themselves.

The extension comes with looking at the reality that on average maybe 1.2 people actually donate out of the three nominated, for a number of reasons (been picked before, cheapskate, on holiday at the time etc..)
My gold learners (more on that soon) would incorporate that in their lesson, whilst the others would just concentrate on working out how to type "3 to the power of 6" in their calculator.

It requires some tweaking i'm sure - and if there is any advice please pass it on.

Here is the powerpoint and the word document worksheet. Please note that if you can't show a video on youtube in school, you will need to swap the video for something else, maybe a still of a celebrity getting drenched.


Resources


N.B. I am yet to be nominated. :p

Mr. Hill

Music and Maths

I love music, and every opportunity I can get it into my lessons I will. I have a theme on Mondays in school which is Music Mondays, where we will always have a music based starter activity, and if the class are well behaved, I will play music for them during the activities in the lesson.

I am pretty up to date with music as I do a variety of DJing in my own time, and tend to play stuff the students will like. I always let them request songs and make a conscious effort to play them, particularly if I haven't heard of the act before. I find that I have bonded with many previously unreachable students by just getting a glimpse of what music tastes they have.

To help with that, I created some Maths & Music starters. Now, I must point out that these are almost identical to Mr Collins' MathsDjing , and honestly only found that these existed after I had done about six of mine. I've therefore been reluctant to post about them, but I do feel that it is good to have variety and it may just be a slightly different combination to his excellent work on this.

The idea is simple, add up every number you hear in the mashup of songs. Explain that the word 'to' and 'for' are not numbers, and that 1999 is '19' and '99' because that's how you sing it. They don't say 'one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine', and if Prince did, I doubt it would have been quite as successful.

Here are my links to the starters:


Maths Music Starters


My favourite one is the joke one - after doing about six of these, then you can play this one. Don't expect an answer, just watch the expressions on the faces of the students!

I also use the Chris Moyles Quiz Night Music questions too, and normally alternate week on week between the two ideas. If anyone has other music based starter activities, I'm all ears!

I will add more every few months so check back and bookmark this page!

Real Life and Inequalities

I find it baffling that students don't see how simple linear inequalities are. The idea that they are so similar to a simple equation, just with a different symbol in the middle seems to pass all but my A grade students.

Perhaps that is the problem though, I see it as solving an equation but having a different sign in the middle. A student, who probably doesn't really get the point of algebra anyway, is not going to be won over on that weak vision of mine.

So I went about trying to relate inequalities to real life. It's actually quite easy. I often show them that we are doing something called inequalities (this works better with KS4 who have come across these symbols more often).
I then ask them to get into groups of less than four.  Most of the time you will get a question of "does that mean four as well?", to which you just repeat the same command.

Brilliant - you have them cornered - they all understand inequalities as they have just proved it. How big could the groups be? How small could they be?

Maybe go again with two parameters, maybe with an equals to, and you will get a pretty strong success rate. Suddenly the daunting topic of inequalities doesn't seem so bad.

The main activity

The Lift Problem

Next - my activity on real life inequalities. I give them a job at a company called U Raise Me Up. They produce lifts, and the job is to work out the safety parameters on each lift.

The powerpoint is fairly self explanatory, but essentially you are looking for them to consistently make links and explain the inequality that is formed when working in this real life context.

My favourite part of this activity is even before getting onto the forming and solving. Finding the average weight of humans by country is always an interesting debate, but by using Wikipedia as 'open knowledge' and spotting that there are blanks in the data, we had to do some extra maths to work out the weights of women in certain countries.

I explained that there is no wrong answer here, and I got some great independent thinking, including averaging women's weights, finding the average difference between male and female weights or comparing similar countries.

Anyway enough rambling - how could I make this activity better?

A Belated Journey Begins

Hello!

It is fair to say that is about time I did some blogging. For the past year (my first in teaching) I have gathered and read some of the best educational maths blogs on the internet, from the simple yet profound resources on MEDIAN, the loveable yet extremely relevant work available on justmaths, the fantastic ideas on Mr. Collins Maths. There are so many maths teachers out there doing amazing things, and it is only fair that I attempt to share any ideas and strategies that have served me well in this, the greatest of professions.

This blog will include ideas for the classroom, for displays, for inspiring maths. Most of all, it is for sharing good practice with those willing to continually improve maths education. It is about discussing ideas, offering suggestions and enjoying the challenge every school day brings.

I hope one day it will be a place to share 'maths with friends'.