So far I’ve made four versions: French, Spanish, German and Italian.

To play you will need:

I’ve been using a few starter activities for my classes as a bit of quick revision on some topics, the ones listed below are all [...]]]> It’s that time of year again, GCSE exams are imminent for several year groups, end of year exams loom for others. The revision season is definitely in full swing.

I’ve been using a few starter activities for my classes as a bit of quick revision on some topics, the ones listed below are all on PowerPoint files [pptx format], if you would like any of them, please help yourself – Creative Commons licences apply to them all:

• Algebra terminology – aimed at OCR units A and B on the new modular scheme, where candidates have to distinguish between expressions, equations, formulae and identities. My definitions aim to be straightforward and comprehensible for Y9 and Y10 students. This one uses Microsoft Mouse Mischief for interaction. If you prefer, there’s a non-Mouse Mischief version too – easy to use with mini-whiteboards.
• Pythagoras – straightforward questions. Starter slide with questions, followed by model solutions.
• Circles – area and circumference – starter questions followed by solutions and key formulae to learn
• Prime factors, HCF and LCM – using factor trees and Venn diagrams
• Angles in polygons – the first slide has wordy questions, subsequent slides have diagrams to use as hints, or to help the teacher or a student to explain how to solve the problem
• Percentage changes – starter questions followed by solutions and a key rule to learn
• Volume and surface areas of cuboids
• Decimal calculations, rounding and estimating – not exciting, but it covers some key questions!

I changed my mind last year though, when Peter Rowlett tweeted a link to a Möbius Valentine’s card.

It’s really simple: two Möbius strips get glued [...]]]> I don’t really do Valentine’s Day. To say Mr MTM dislikes it would be putting it rather mildly, so to be honest, it’s just not worth the hassle.

I changed my mind last year though, when Peter Rowlett tweeted a link to a Möbius Valentine’s card.

It’s really simple: two Möbius strips get glued together to make the ‘card’. When both strips are cut in half it forms two interlocking hearts. Very apt – and rather fantastic. I’ll be trying these with Y9 tomorrow.

Matt Parker has written and shared some instructions – although I suspect I’ll be offering Y9 a version without the mention of sexy brains!

If you would like some instructions for making Mobius strips, this page might help. (MoreThanMaths.com Mark II is still something of a work in progress – but that page is fine!)

(Adapted from a post on my personal blog, three-legged-cat.co.uk)

I’ve tried lots of approaches to this over the years, but I’ve never really been happy with the results. [...]]]> Last week I found myself faced with the prospect of teaching two foundation groups (set 6 out of 6 in Y7 and Y8) how to draw straight line graphs from simple algebraic rules. Uh oh.

I’ve tried lots of approaches to this over the years, but I’ve never really been happy with the results. This time I might have cracked it!

1. We played a few rounds of ‘I like those coordinates’

This was based on my former colleague Dorothy’s game ‘I like that number’, in which students guessed numbers and she told them whether she liked the numbers or not. The students had to guess the rule – it might be that Dorothy liked multiples of 3, primes, odd numbers etc.

I did the same thing but with coordinates. I put the headings ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ on the board and invited them to guess coordinates. I wrote their guesses on the board. (I also indulged in a bit of overacting – ‘Ooh I really like those!’, or a regretful, ‘No, I’m not keen on those.’)

I didn’t say there was a rule – I just asked them if they could spot what I was doing. They could.

In the first game I kept it easy, I ‘liked’ coordinates where x=1. I placed no restrictions on the numbers that they could guess. Sometimes it took a while for them to find a pair that I ‘liked’, but that was fine – overall I was surprised at how quickly they spotted the rules. I led for a couple of rounds, using rules such as x=y or x+y=7, then I let the students play in groups of 2 or 3.

The students loved playing the game.

2. We drew some lines

I gave the students some pre-drawn axes – I know that several of them have difficulty drawing accurate diagrams.

We picked out a rule that we had used. They suggested some coordinates that fitted the rule and we plotted them. They noticed that the points formed a straight line pretty quickly, with no prompting from me.

Sometimes they suggested coordinates that fitted the rule, but that couldn’t be plotted because they went off the scale. This was great, because I often find that students think the x-values that they are given in textbook questions have been selected by some mysterious and incomprehensible method, rather than simply because they can be plotted within the available space. This way, the students realised that we couldn’t plot these points and suggested something that we could plot instead.

3. We labelled our lines

I asked the students to suggest how we could label the lines. Y7 suggested writing the rule briefly in words, so that’s what we did. One Y8 boy said he didn’t want to write the whole rule – could he just write x=1? Fantastic! Y8 ended up writing all their rules in algebra. For a group of students working at high level 3/low level 4, I thought that was pretty good.

4. We had a go at the same thing using input-output tables

We had used input-output tables with the heading input x and output y in a previous lesson, I had told them we would see how this connected to graphs in the follow-up lesson. I set the tables out in columns, hoping that the students would spot the connection with coordinates – they did.

In each case, by the end of the lesson, I had a group of students who could start from a rule in words, or written in a table, and use it to draw a graph. Most of the Y8 group could also write the rules in algebra. We haven’t quite reached the stage where they can start the process from a rule written in algebra, but that’s fine – overall I was pleased with their progress because I felt that the students understood what they were doing.

I’ll be using this lesson again, including with more able students.

I stumbled upon a very nice idea for some Chinese New Year themed maths on Yummy Math earlier this week.

The animals in the Chinese zodiac are very well known, but the idea of elements was less familiar to me. A cycle of twelve animals, paired up with a another cycle of five [...]]]>

I stumbled upon a very nice idea for some Chinese New Year themed maths on Yummy Math earlier this week.

The animals in the Chinese zodiac are very well known, but the idea of elements was less familiar to me. A cycle of twelve animals, paired up with a another cycle of five elements (each as either yin or yang) led to a nice common multiples task.

Being a bit pushed for time, I put together a quick PowerPoint (I printed out one slide with a table of sample dates and years as a handout) and served it up as starter activity for various groups.

We started with some very easy questions: Can you name the animals in the Chinese zodiac? What year were you born in?

Then we tried: What is the animal and element for this year? This was supposed to be an easy(ish) question to get them thinking about how the calendar/zodiac worked, but it proved to be a real challenge for some students.

Finally we tackled the bigger question When is the next year of the Yin Metal Rabbit? With one class, I also looked at how we could make this into a problem/functional maths-style GCSE question.

This was supposed to be a starter activity, but it turned out to be a richer task than I had expected: lots of students discussing methods, some spotting the multiples straight away, others not at all; heated debates about the right answers (which I declined to supply until the students had arrived at the solutions for themselves).

It was a good ‘un. It’s probably a bit late for this year, but should you decide to try it, feel free to grab a copy of my presentation (PPTX format – also has a few speakers’ notes). Flashy version is below:

… and for those of you viewing on one of those new fangled iDon’t do Flash devices, here’s a nice PDF version instead.

UPDATE: here’s a slightly updated version of the PowerPoint for the year of the dragon in 2012

Photo: Paper Dragon by Lois Lindemann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Presentation: Kung Hei Fat Choy! by Lois Lindemann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Anyway, this [...]]]> The maths department at Birley recently purchased 12 iPod touches for use in lessons. I’ve been getting them set up and trying them out. They have caused great excitement in my lessons – in fact, just seeing the iPods was enough to drive some of my students into a frenzy of excitement!

Anyway, this is very much a voyage of discovery for me: I’d never owned an iPod or an iPhone, so there’s been a bit of a learning curve – helped enormously by recommendations from some of the fantastic people I follow on Twitter.

Let’s start with ten apps that have worked well for me in the classroom:

1. Arithmetick This is a free app (recommended by @colport – thank you!)
As the name suggests, it’s great for practising basic arithmetic. Choose from add, subtract, multiply, divide – or a combination of these, pick a level and get started. I’ve used this with students in Y6 working at level 3/4 and with a foundation group in Y9. A few of them couldn’t keep up with the timer and opted for a practice session rather than the game, but most students opted for the game, got really competitive and tried to get high scores.
Verdict: Great for practising multiplication tables, in multiplication and division form. Also good for number bonds.

2. TwentyFour Lite This is a free app, there’s also a paid version.
I used the 24 game as an intro to BODMAS/BIDMAS with Y7 students working at level level 5/6 . We played this as a starter activity. They loved it, several of them went home and downloaded this onto their own devices.
Verdict: Nice version of the game, shows working step by step (which was ideal for me). The free version is fine for classroom use, but any serious 24 addicts would probably run out of games and need to upgrade.

3. World Maths Day 2010 This is a free app (recommended by @misterel – thank you!)
I used this with some of my Y10 form group, they really enjoyed it.
Verdict: Nice app, wide range of levels available, but it does require an age range setting – which is reset via the settings screen, not from within the app itself. Not a big problem, but will need re-setting if I use this with younger students.

4. Guess My Age This is a free app
I downloaded this one (it’s an app version of an old trick – maths teachers will recognise it!), but didn’t ask students to try it. A lot of them tried it anyway – and are amazed by it.
Verdict: The students love this and want to know how it works – but I’m not telling! I’m sure they’ll work it out sooner or later.

5. Dynamic dice This is a paid app (currently 59p)
We use assorted dice for probability work. This is nice for students, they like shaking the iPod to roll the dice.
Verdict: The students like this, but it does present a distraction when we are supposed to working on other things, so I think I’ll save this for the next round of probability. It’s intended for use when playing games, so it doesn’t record the scores, which we would need to do in a maths lesson.

6. Coin toss and Heads Tails Both are free
Two coin flipping apps, which I was trying out for probability work.
Verdict: Heads Tails is the better of the two for maths, because it records numbers and percentages of heads and tails. Good for gathering data rapidly, without the need for students to record anything.

7. Algebra Level 1 This is a paid app (currently 59p)
Solve simple equations, selecting an answer from a list.
Verdict: Worked well as part of a revision session with Y7. I didn’t want to restrict myself to using multiple choice questions, so we started with this and then moved onto Mathmaster Algebra.

8. Mathmaster Algebra This is a paid app (currently 59p)
Solve simple equations, but this time the answer must be typed in using a keypad. The students competed to get a high score.
Verdict: Worked well as a revision activity, following on from Algebra Level 1. It got a fantastic response from the students – they were really engrossed.

9. Falling Algebra 1 This is a paid app (currently 59p)
Solve simple equations, but this time the answer is selected from a cloud of falling numbers.
Verdict: This drove me mad – but Y10 loved it, so it’s a keeper.

Some more nice maths apps are listed here and here (via @IaninSheffield, who has bookmarked lots of useful sites that I’m working my way through – thanks Ian!)

Photo: iPod touch 1.1.3 (main screen) by chrisdejabet. Used under Creative Commons Licence.

The aim of the session is to provide you with some starting points and ideas that you can incorporate into [...]]]> These were originally on a wiki, http://bccpgce.pbworks.com,  but since I’m handing control of that over to the student teachers, I though I’d better keep a copy of my own:

Starting out with Educational Technology

The aim of the session is to provide you with some starting points and ideas that you can incorporate into your teaching. You should also be aware of some of the issues surrounding e-safety and professionalism.

 I won’t be doing handouts for this presentation – all the links and resources are here:

Introduction

• A bit about me
• Why are we here?
  • QTS standards
  • Starting a journey
  • It’s all about the learning
  • Tools I’ve chosen are either available at Birley or free 

ICT tools for teachers

Getting started: 

• Prezi
  • see it in action – this is James Mitchie’s first ever Prezi and this was mine - it’s easy!
  • get an education account with a dot edu or dot sch email address 
  • try the tutorials on the site to get started

• Wallwisher
  • try it out here
  • for groups to share ideas
  • for individuals to get creative – maybe in the style of Life on the Refrigerator Door 
  • It’s not limited to text - look at what Thomas Tallis School created 
  • Interesting ways to use Wallwisher  (more Interesting ways resources later!)

• PowerPoint
  • Good and bad
    • Alvin Trusty shows you how to imporve your presentations (nb this is a long video – around 45 mins, but worth taking the time to watch. It is also for an American audience, so the copyright rules aren’t exactly the same as in the UK)
    • Dan Meyer redesigns a slide Sounds simple, but there’s some very thorough analysis of how this would be beneficial to the learners.
  • Slideshare
  • Voting system

• Open Office – it’s free!

Images

• Copyright and Creative Commons
• Flickr 
  • Creative Commons images
  • Advanced search - remember to tick the Creative Commons check box!
  • The Commons 
• Online image editing with Picnik 

Searching and researching:

• Improve your skills and meet the team from Commoncraft
• Visual search with Spezify.com - demonstrated by Dai Barnes using Screenr. Spezify allows the results of a web search to be displayed graphically: pictures, photos and snippets of web pages appear. Of course some of these may not be suitable for school – Dai uses this as a teaching point and discusses what should/shouldn’t be clicked on, but obviously teachers should do the search and check the results before they use Spezify with a class!
• News search with newsmap.jp (don’t be put off by the japanese domain name – results are in English). Nice for tutor time, as well as for looking at current events.
• How do you decide if information is reliable? How do you teach this skill?
  • Teachers TV resource – for teachers. Obviously be aware about age appropiateness of websites etc if you use this type of activity with students.
  • North Pacific Tree Octopus (Google key words: tree octopus), or provide a direct link: zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.htm
  • Boilerplate   (Google key words: boilerplate robot), or to avoide the unhelpful search suggestion that includes the word hoax, provide a direct link: www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/

Sharing links:

• URL shorteners
  • pros and cons
    • We were asked to let our students do a survey. This was the URL: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey.zgi?p=WEB229PGRBLP3H As you can imagine, this caused problems, so I made a shortcut: http://tinyurl.com/sypolice
    • This type of shortcut has to be entered into the address bar – typing it into Google won’t work!
    • What could happen if students mistyped? A teaching point here – use the back button!
    • Filtering in place in many schools
    • Beware of malicious links – this is a teaching point 
  • tinyurl and others
• Social bookmarking
  • Commoncraft again (I love these videos – can you tell?)
  • Delicious
    • for teachers - my bookmarks
    • as a search tool 
    • for students - Tom Barrett’s class page 
  • Diigo
    • annotate the web – but beware of risks – and SPAM!
    • groups - edtech and teaching and learning with web 2.0
    • allows automatic backup - I do all my bookmarking with diigo and it exports automatically to delicious. I can be part of two networks and I have a backup – just in case 

• The classtools fruit machine 

Literacy: language, reading, writing and speaking

• Wordle
  • To introduce a topic
  • To compare two or more texts
  • To teach students how to do a presentation without a script
  • To encourage students to vary their vocabulary (for example considering alternatives when the word ’said’ appears in large letters when students analyse their own creative writing)
  • See a presentation here on Samantha Lunn’s blog, or read about 23 ways to use Wordle in the MFL classroom 
  • Interesting ways to use Wordle 
• Digital storytelling
  • from talking to writing
  • Using Samarost 2 as a stimulus for creative writing. [nb: Chapter 1 is free, the full version costs $5. There are some Google ads, at least on the free version] It tells the story of some aliens who visit a planet and leave with the inhabitants’ dog. An adventure to rescue the dog ensues. It’s very nicely animated and can be used as the basis for descriptive or imaginative writing. A new version is expected soon, there is also Samarost 1, but this contains characters smoking hookahs, so might not be suitable for use in school!
  •  inanimatealice.com is really good for digital storytelling, students can discuss what is happening, predict what will happen next, talk about the images or discuss the choice of music. They may even be inspired to create a story of their own.
  • Create or choose your own starting point – it doesn’t have to be fictional:
    • Video: Most schools filter YouTube, but you could try Teacher Tube, Vimeo or DotSub
    • News
    • Historical event
    • Animoto
• Blogs
  • Blogs and wikis in the classroom (The first link includes a comparison of some different sites by Tom Barrett  – it’s worth reading)
  • For students
    • Preparing for Paris 
    • Nottingham High School’s travel blog 
    • Mr Higgins’ classes (the links to the class blogs are in the sidebar on the right hand side)
  • For teachers
    • as authors – reflect, share
    • as readers/commenters -discover,  reflect, discuss
• Wikis
  • Wikis in Plain English 
  • PB Works (you’re looking at it!), Wet Paint and others
  • YoRead (created using Wikispaces)
• Audio and podcasts
  • Can be made by staff or students
  • Record on mobile phones? (But not in the classroom!)
  • Use a simple microphone
  • Audacity
  • Don’t worry if your early attempts sound less than great - content is more important than top quality sound
• Collaborative writing
  • Google docs - take the official tour, or try the Plain English version.
  • Etherpad/Primary pad  
    • Etherpad is an online collaborative writing tool. It was recently acquired by Google, but the code has now been open sourced, so other versions have started to appear – such as primary pad which is for use in primary schools. Keep a lookout for new versions – lots are now starting to appear.
    • A number of people (originally up to 8 people, but this may change as people play with the source code) can write at once; each person’s contribution is highlighted in a different colour, so it easy to see who wrote what. There is a chat window at the side, also colour coded. There is a time slider that can be used to see how the writing developed over time.
    • Steve Kirkpatrick is a teacher who used this really effectively. He played an animated Batman clip from YouTube, students were split into groups and asked to describe short sections of the clip (it’s only one minute long). The clip is full of action and vivid imagery, so it’s an ideal stimulus for descriptive writing. The students collaborated on Etherpad to produce the written work. The teacher can enter the Etherpad and check/correct work – with their contribution clearly highlighted. Read more on Steve’s blog here.

     Issues:

• Need to check that Etherpad actually works – some firewalls block it.
• The pads may be public, so in theory anyone can enter the discussion.
• Students don’t tend to start this in an organised way, so it is worthwhile either modelling how different group members should start at different points, or even putting names in for them to show where to start.

Numeracy: handling data and more

• Collecting data with Google forms
  • An introduction from Google 
  • How Dan Stucke amazed his class with Google forms: 

He used Google forms to set up a survey and asked his teacher network (more on that later!) to complete it. Students were hooked by the sudden appearance of their own data. Once exotic locations from around the world started to appear there were oohs and ahs! Forms and data were used to generate discussion about quality of questions etc.

One disadvantage – pupils can put rude words in and there’s no way of checking who it was.

Read more – Dan’s original post about using this in his interview lesson is here, his post about the presentation is here.

Dan recently did an even better versiopn of this which included the use of Wallwisher. The people who completed his survey left feedback about the questions on postits.

•  
  • Forms are also good for pupil surveys 
• Maths maps Another brilliant project started by Tom Barrett. These are all aiimed at KS2, but why not adapt it to suit your own subject and key stage(s)?

Taking control of your professional development:

Networking with other professionals and sharing ideas online

• Teachers TV
  • Videos (obviously) for use in class and for CPD
  • Groups/comments/discussion
• TES
  • Shared resources
  • Discussion forum
• Twitter
  • Meet my PLN
  • #movemeon What happened when Doug Belshaw asked educators to share hints and tips using Twitter and the #movemeon hashtag?  Lots of people joined in to share their ideas and create a really interesting crowd-sourced resource.

    Doug created an archive of the tweets using Twapperkeeper, which is great,  but it’s not likely to reach teachers that aren’t already using Twitter. So he made a book as well. Brilliant.

    This isn’t just for new or trainee teachers, we’re all learners, I’m sure everyone can find something in here to make them think  ‘I’ve got to try that’, or ‘I used to do that – why did I stop?’ Doug and Stuart Ridout have done a great job with the book. Best of all, the e-book is free, so what are you waiting for? Go and download one.

    PDF/ebook (free download): http://bit.ly/movemeonpdf

    Book (at cost price): http://bit.ly/movemeonbook

• Teachmeets
• Blogs and RSS
  • more from Commoncraft – the miracle of RSS or try Google Reader in Plain English
  • Some suggestions to get you started:
    • Tom Barrett’s edte.ch
    • José Picardo’s Box of Tricks
    • Rodd Lucier, The Clever Sheep
• Interesting ways presentations 

…and finally

• Don’t believe everything that you hear about so-called ‘digital natives’
  • always teach the skills – don’t assume that they know how to do things
  • always teach the behaviours – don’t assume that they know what to do
  • find ways to encourage and monitor participation – you need to overcome the 90-9-1 rule
• Beware of advertising
• Always have a Plan B 
• Have fun! 

Could you pick one thing from today that you could use with a class after Easter?

Last term I sat with some students and asked them to show me things that they liked on various websites. There was no agreement whatsoever about preferred colour schemes, design styles or layouts, but [...]]]> Yesterday I wrote about creating rollover images in WordPress. This is all very nice, but what’s the point?

1. Engagement

Last term I sat with some students and asked them to show me things that they liked on various websites. There was no agreement whatsoever about preferred colour schemes, design styles or layouts, but almost everyone liked games, videos and interactive content. I am reliably informed that buttons which change when the mouse is rolled over them are ‘cool’.

If a set of buttons with rollover effects will encourage students to access the site I’ve set up for them, then it’s worth doing. (Yes I know, it’ll take much more than that, but it’s still worth it.)

2. Simple interactive content

Once you’veset up the use of rollover effects for the first time, it makes it possible to put some simple interactive content into web pages or posts in a class blog. Here’s a few examples:

Flashcards:

I’m going to ask Y10 to make some of these for the perimeter/area/volume formulae that they need to learn for their exam in January.

Revision prompts:

Giving information or clues:

Any more suggestions?