Mrs P ♥️ maths

@mrs-p-maths.bsky.social

Maths teacher always looking to learn 😁

This term I've been trialling using sentence stems-classes saying key ideas out loud. In #MatysToday I tried it with year 11 higher tier revision. We all felt a bit silly at first but it genuinely helped them to consolidate their understanding and improved the quality of their explanations.

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I was so proud of one of my year 13's in #Mathstoday. He said he just didn't get what independent events meant. He said he knew he should have learnt it ages ago but had been too embarrassed to ask before today. I praised him for identifying a gap in his knowledge and doing something about it.

In #MathsToday I used stem sentences to support teaching of expanding brackets. I was pleasantly surprised to hear pupils respond to questions using the structure of the stem sentence without me prompting them to do so. Would love to hear others' experiences of stem sentences in secondary maths.

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In #MathsToday pupils vote which of these were equivalent to the original expression. 1 vote Mario, 15 votes Luigi, 1 vote Bowser and 20 votes Peaches. One pupil explained she voted for Peaches because she just knew you multiply. So we then looked at it expanded and why multiplying works.

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While simplifying fractions in #MathsToday, a pupil asked me why the divisibility by 3 trick works. I felt daft I'd never queried it before! We had a lovely time using algebra to prove it works for 2 digit numbers then 3 digits numbers. Love it when a lesson goes off piste like that.

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In #MathsToday my year 11s were writing error intervals. They asked if the inequalities were always the same (...<=...<...), I originally said yes but then one pupil mentioned negatives! Brilliant discussion about whether an error interval for x rounded to -4 to the nearest integer is -4.5<x<=-3.5

Calling all Maths teachers! What are some of your all-time great tasks for secondary Maths? Ones that could have their place in any curriculum, one that should be studied in PGCE courses, ones that started whole new genres of tasks... ... or just ones you really like. (see some of mine below)

So after working on this on and off for 5 years I have finally finished typing up and creating a book of my dad's letters home and accompanying photos from his time as a VSO in east Asia for his family to read again. My dad died over 30 years ago so this means so much to my family. #VSO

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In #MathsToday my year 8's were finding the volume of prisms. We used multilink cubes to help understand the concept as finding the number of cubes in a 'layer' then multiplying by the number of layers. I'm trying to get them away from thinking shape work is all about remembering formulas.

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Please can those of you who use devices like Chromebooks in your lessons share your experience. My school are looking to get them in September. Would love to know 1? how your lessons have changed since using devices. 2. Any tips on best use. Any reposts are also much appreciated #iteachmaths

In #MathsToday I ran a CPD session on using representations when teaching maths. The key take aways were 1. Choose the right representation to aid in the understanding of the concept/structure 2. Use familiar representations 3. Take time when introducing new representations.

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