Happy New Year everyone! I know, I know...I'm a little late. I keep meaning to blog far more than I find the time for these days, but I will endeavour to increase the amount of posts this year, compared to last. I have a lot of exciting 'mathsy' things coming up this year and so I should have lots to share with everyone. Watch this space (please).
So, it's a new year, which means a new term and along with it...time to change my displays. Now, a favourite display of mine is, of course, the 'Year Problem'. I have used the same resources I used last year (uploaded to the TES by @c0mplexnumber --> https://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Yearly-Maths-BIDMAS-Challenge-interactive-display-6323177/. Check out her display here (it's way far better than mine)! However, last year I put the display up in the corridor outside my classroom, hoping it'd attract attention from other classes and more students would join in the problem. As much as lots of people (including our Head) commented on it, most of the work was done by my classes. Plus, everytime one of my students got an answer I had to pop my head round the corner to right it on the display. This also meant my classes couldn't see (without going outside the classroom), which numbers had already been completed and which they cold still try and get. Given all the above, I decided to put the display in my classroom this year, and sent the ppt in Clarissa's resources round to all our tutor groups to attempt the puzzle in tutor time, sending solutions to me via their form tutors.
The puzzle has worked far better this year as it's in my classroom. My Y11 set 1 students have particularly been enthused by it, especially when we were working through trig graphs and they could use the inverse trig functions to get sin^-1(1) = 90 and tan^-1 (1) = 45 to get other numbers they had previously not found. Here was the display prior to it being introduced to my classes...
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Here it is now (almost complete!)...
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We only have the numbers 67 and 68 left to find...maybe they can't be done...?
All of the students that have put forward a solution will be getting reward points (1 for each correct solution).
The other display I put up this term (replacing my 'A Very Mathsy Xmas'display) was one I was inspired by on Twitter. I saw the following tweet over the xmas holidays. How I didn't see it beforehand I don't know! I went on over to Kerry Tait @misstait_85's blog to get more info as to what she put on her display and downloaded lots of the templates she put up on there too. Check it out here.
Here's my 'Finished?' display...
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There are 7 tasks my students can choose from:
1) Multiplication - basic multiplication grids to practice their basic times tables
2) 5-a-day - a selection of www.corbettmaths.com's 5-a-day resources
3) Tweet Me - tweet templates from Kerry's blog. These have been very useful for my 'takeaway homeworks' too as kids can just get a quick template to use for their homework.
4) Plenary Sticks - one of my new resources, coming to the TES soon! More on this later.
5) Challenges - I took the nrich puzzles from my 'A Very Mathsy Xmas' display and put these in this folder
6) Learning Triangles - from Kerry's blog
7) Gimme 5 - from Kerry's blog
I think the display looks pretty cool, The advantage of it being on the room divider is that I can move it around the room too if needed to put it in more prominent spaces, or into my 'room in the side of my room, room' for students who have finished to have a bit of space to work in away from other students still working.
Finally, I've been shopping on one of my favourite websites again...
www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk
I've got myself some new A4 sized blackboards and chalkboard pens. I've started putting up revision posters for my Y11s (set 1 and set 4). Here's one I put together on expressing one number as a percentage of another...
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The pens work on the windows too...they can be revising maths whilst in the playground (I'm getting pretty good at writing backwards)!
So, it's a new year, which means a new term and along with it...time to change my displays. Now, a favourite display of mine is, of course, the 'Year Problem'. I have used the same resources I used last year (uploaded to the TES by @c0mplexnumber --> https://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Yearly-Maths-BIDMAS-Challenge-interactive-display-6323177/. Check out her display here (it's way far better than mine)! However, last year I put the display up in the corridor outside my classroom, hoping it'd attract attention from other classes and more students would join in the problem. As much as lots of people (including our Head) commented on it, most of the work was done by my classes. Plus, everytime one of my students got an answer I had to pop my head round the corner to right it on the display. This also meant my classes couldn't see (without going outside the classroom), which numbers had already been completed and which they cold still try and get. Given all the above, I decided to put the display in my classroom this year, and sent the ppt in Clarissa's resources round to all our tutor groups to attempt the puzzle in tutor time, sending solutions to me via their form tutors.
The puzzle has worked far better this year as it's in my classroom. My Y11 set 1 students have particularly been enthused by it, especially when we were working through trig graphs and they could use the inverse trig functions to get sin^-1(1) = 90 and tan^-1 (1) = 45 to get other numbers they had previously not found. Here was the display prior to it being introduced to my classes...
Here it is now (almost complete!)...
All of the students that have put forward a solution will be getting reward points (1 for each correct solution).
The other display I put up this term (replacing my 'A Very Mathsy Xmas'display) was one I was inspired by on Twitter. I saw the following tweet over the xmas holidays. How I didn't see it beforehand I don't know! I went on over to Kerry Tait @misstait_85's blog to get more info as to what she put on her display and downloaded lots of the templates she put up on there too. Check it out here.
Here's my 'Finished?' display...
1) Multiplication - basic multiplication grids to practice their basic times tables
2) 5-a-day - a selection of www.corbettmaths.com's 5-a-day resources
3) Tweet Me - tweet templates from Kerry's blog. These have been very useful for my 'takeaway homeworks' too as kids can just get a quick template to use for their homework.
4) Plenary Sticks - one of my new resources, coming to the TES soon! More on this later.
5) Challenges - I took the nrich puzzles from my 'A Very Mathsy Xmas' display and put these in this folder
6) Learning Triangles - from Kerry's blog
7) Gimme 5 - from Kerry's blog
I think the display looks pretty cool, The advantage of it being on the room divider is that I can move it around the room too if needed to put it in more prominent spaces, or into my 'room in the side of my room, room' for students who have finished to have a bit of space to work in away from other students still working.
Finally, I've been shopping on one of my favourite websites again...
www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk
I've got myself some new A4 sized blackboards and chalkboard pens. I've started putting up revision posters for my Y11s (set 1 and set 4). Here's one I put together on expressing one number as a percentage of another...
The pens work on the windows too...they can be revising maths whilst in the playground (I'm getting pretty good at writing backwards)!