I've been trying to teach BIDMAS to a pupil who is strangely averse to divisions despite his clear ability with times tables. To persuade him that he can do divisions I've put together a spreadsheet that randomly generates questions in the form of DST triangles. The first sheet has a mixture of multiplications, the second is divisions only and the third allows you to put in your own max and min multiplicands. Hope it is of use.
Download In the month since I last uploaded, I've been finishing a spreadsheet. I have often been concerned that pupils who have demonstrated an ability in a given topic seem unable to do the topic shortly afterwards. After reading about the Forgetting Curve I decided to ensure pupils reviewed recent work regularly as starter questions. I developed an Excel spreadsheet that put random numbers into set questions allowing me to generate a set of starter questions simply by opening the file. These were then digitally copied and pasted into a flipchart allowing me to annotate them with the answers. I have also found that doing this allows me to easily change the background colour to aid dyslexic pupils, this can change by the class. As I have written elsewhere I have been looking to develop educational software to generate an income, so I started to try and replicate it as a web page that I could set up as a subscription site. After a while I realised that much of what makes this file work would be lost, that is the ability to switch on topics as they have been taught and to then save the file. By setting up a webpage for this would also remove the speed element when generating the starter questions and lead to it not being used. So, I have decided to make it available for download at a cost of £15 the link to which is on the store page. To give you a better idea of what it looks like and what is contained there is a link below to a sampler spreadsheet and another to a video on Youtube, there's no sound on it so don't think there is something wrong. As always, comments gratefully received. Sampler Youtube I'm a big believer in trying to make sure my pupils know their times tables and always test them at the start of a year and address any gaps where necessary. Apps on mobile phones have proven fantastic for getting pupils to improve their times tables, many are free, there are loads to choose from and they can practise when they have time to kill, on a bus for example. I then retest the pupils every couple of weeks and it is immediately obvious who is practising and who isn't. I have uploaded the tool I use to test them, it uses ActivExpression handsets so will only be of use if you have them. It has a set of questions up to 12 x 12 that will appear randomly on the handsets and on another page the corresponding divisions.
Click to download Still sorting through the USB, I found a nice file that I used for teaching bearings. Some time ago the geography department gave ordnance survey maps to each pupil in year 7, after a few years of doing this there was a bit of a surplus. So I took 16 of these and cut A3 sized sections out of each one, centred on the maths department within the school, cue a growl from the geography dept but I don't think they had considered copyright issues. On each map I drew a line pointing north from the maths department, mounted them on thick card and got them laminated so they could be drawn over with drywipe pens. We then played a few games in the lesson with pupils starting to find bearings of various locations from the maths department, move on to finding bearings from other locations and then finding locations when given bearings from two points. I also made sure that the scale was cut from the maps and pasted onto the bottom so that we could discuss scale and ratio. I also used the maps to introduce the concept of vectors, with all pupils facing north they have to describe where the local towns were and fairly soon realise you need a direction and a distance.
I can't upload a file for this as there are copyright issues on the map and it will only work to it's maximum effect if it is centred around the school they are in, in an area they know. I also worked on a version using a map of the school but it didn't work quite as well. Hopefully given someone an idea. This resource will probably be of no use to many but very useful to a few. When constructing a VLE I created a spreadsheet with hyperlinks and descriptions for each of the pages on Mymaths. This allowed me to make an online student version of the scheme of work and provide hyperlinks from each unit to the appropriate lesson page in Mymaths.
Click to download This is more of an idea rather than a teaching resource, it certainly has saved me loads of time when planning as well as those vital seconds at the start of a lesson when trying to find which flipchart I intend to use . Again it’s not maths specific and hopefully it will help someone so please share. I never really took to teacher’s planners as they seemed too generic and not really what I wanted. Teaching maths means you see each class three or four times a week so I wanted to plan for the week but keeping the lessons for each class together. So I found myself making my own sheets and printing them out each week. When I saw a colleague using hyperlinks I knew I could just add them to the worksheets I had been using and save myself loads of time. This only really works if you have everything on a single USB stick so that the links you set up on a weekend will work when you get into school. 1. Create an excel file formatted for your timetable. Save one sheet as a Pro forma and then copy this each week allowing you to easily track lessons covered. 2. If you have a Scheme of Work broken down by lesson then you can put hyperlinks to flipcharts on there 3. Insert hyperlinks against each lesson, when clicked the correct flipchart will open immediately – no searching. 4. For any additional information use the comments. I have attached a zip file with a file structure I use for sorting files, a medium term plan for GCSE and a timetable spreadsheet . Click to Download Zip File Just in case my instructions weren't clear I also had a play with videos, enjoy. Here are some more resources that again are aimed at C/D classes. I like my pupils to get used to exam type questions early on and find this particularly important for pupils whose English may also be sub grade C as the exam boards don't seem to take that into account. To allow them to see these questions on a regular basis I took the Edexcel linear papers from June 2009 to November 2013 and created six booklets, three of them are from Paper 1 and the other three Paper 2. I then differentiated the work by producing one booklet with the first 4 pages, one with the first 8 and finally one with the first 12. They are designed to be printed as A4 booklets with two sides per page first 12 booklet is a big thick one that might cause problems in repro so you might need to produce a thinned down version (my free trial on Adobe ran out before I could split it into two). There is also a Christmas booklet with some nice colouring-in to do as well as the questions.
Click to download zip file I created a spreadsheet that allowed me to record all issues with my classes. It uses drop down boxes to ensure that the data input is very quick and the spreadsheet is filtered to allow me to sort by pupil. I then used this data to explain the performance of my pupils when called upon. The file can be modified to suit your requirements, upload class lists issues and actions into columns I, J and K respectively and away you go. I used the comment function when I needed to make an additional statement. Not only useful in maths so please pass around.
Click to download |