Just an update, really. Someone contacted me about my HCF and LCM lessons being linked wrongly on here, and I realised that they were a bit crap, so I tidied them up.
I removed a lot of ‘narration’ (I initially put these in to help teachers who just wanted to pick up and go, but it made the lessons too click-y, I always skipped them) and put in example problem pairs. I also added a whole lot of questions. For instance:
I noticed that these type of questions come up a lot in exams so I thought I should add them into my lessons.
There’s also a whole lot of worded questions now.
There’s three lessons in one here, really. HCF, LCM and HCF mixed, worded questions.
Think this is a lot closer to being comprehensive.
I guess I’ve started a week late. The reason is quite simple, I think I’ve got a bit of resource writer’s block!
This PowerPoint is fine.
It’s got an example problem pair.
A discussion (which I’ve found a useful bit in my lessons. I guess some people might call them a hinge question) and some questions.
But I’m not sure how I feel about the questions at all. They’re a bit… bleugh. I guess they increase in difficulty level, and some of the questions link back, but it all seems a little bit boring. There doesn’t seem to be anything here to get your teeth into.
In fact, I nearly didn’t share this resource at all. It lacks … seasoning. I’ve tried to reflect on this and improve it a little, but I’m drawing a bit of a blank. Eeek. I couldn’t even find any JMO type questions.
I did add a little codebreaker, but I feel that I’m exhausting that format.
If you’ve got any thoughts, give me a shout on Twitter (@ticktockmaths) or below.
Normally I make a lot of stuff from scratch, but Jo’s work here is so good that I can’t really improve on it. If you get to see Jo do an ‘in depth’ presentation, go. The time and effort behind them is phenomenal.
PowerPoint contains a section on writing things in index and expanded form.
As well as some questions people might find a bit old fashioned. Also the first time I’ve put a ‘reveal all’ button on a page. Can’t believe I’ve not thought to do that before.
I like these little discussion slides. I think they’re fun.
Some UKMT questions, which I stole from this book. It’s a lovely little book.
I also added a little problem solvey bit where we talk about powers of two and binary.
Multiplying to come next (it’s basically copied and pasted from Jo again. Sorry Jo!)
I find telling pupils the Pythagoras rules and then getting them to solve ‘problems’ isn’t enough. Often, the unstructured problem solving can be overwhelming for students.
Opinions vary. You might think that I’ve structured this waaay too much, and removed too much thinking from the students.
It would be interesting to hear people’s point of view on this.
Starts with a ‘do Pythagoras but with a little context’ and leads into a question that’s a little more unstructured.
Moves onto using Pythagoras to find the area of a triangle.
Maybe I’m over explaining things, but in the past I have not made enough things explicit and I’ve just assumed my students will work it out. I think I’d rather be more explicit.
Next, we pick from a complex diagram.
Now points. Which I don’t actually think is too complicated.
I’d love for people to feedback on this lesson. Is there too much spoon feeding going on here? How can I reduce the spoon feeding whilst also making skills explicit?
Something I’ve wanted to get around to completing for a while. I love ratio and I’ve got into doing a little bit of bar modelling. There’s some LOVELY questions in the White Rose Barvember stuff.
This lesson has an example problem pair and some mini-whiteboard work. When I taught this lesson, the mini-whiteboard stuff really, really worked on getting students on the same page and up to speed.
I put quite a lot of thought into this set of questions, too.
I think I’ve done a good job with question 2 in particular, there.
Also there’s some worded questions.
Question 5 might be my favorite question of all the questions I have ever written. There’s just something lovely and crunchy about it.
Obviously this lesson includes the plenary check as well and also a problem solving question.
Friday’s resource is the last one for a while. It’s the Easter break. If I’m writing maths on a beach in Laos, my wife will murder me. On a personal note, I’ve managed to have a blog ready every Monday, Wednesday and Friday this half term. Pat on the back for me, there. I hope to have the same schedule next term.
Bearings is one of those difficult topics to teach, I think. Even though it’s reasonable easy.
I’ve done a lesson here concentrating on just measuring and constructing. No calculation at all. I’m going to put that in a separate lesson.
Which means you’re going to have to print out the example problem pair 🙁
Starts with a little discussion on if something could be a bearing or not.
Goes onto a worksheet on measuring.
I suppose I should have really presented an example with angles labeled and asked them to pick out the right bearing (like the exam question at the end of this PowerPoint) but I think I wanted to add that in next lesson.
Then some whiteboard work on the compass.
Then some construction questions.
My example problem pair here includes animations. I kind of hate it. I’ve really tried to move on from ‘clicking’. If you’ve downloaded my PowerPoint in the past you might have noticed that I’ve deleted a lot of stuff. I used to have animated multi-step solutions and examples. Indeed some of my older, non-updated PowerPoints still have that stuff. I really regret that now. I know it’s a crutch, and can be helpful in ‘scripting’ but I think kids need to see you WRITING and doing the calculation yourself (I use the pen tool in PowerPoint).
But there wasn’t a real way to get around using animations here, unless you have a visualizer. If you do, do that!
I’m not quite sure what I was thinking when I wrote these slides initially. They were a mess!
For a start, I bundled writing inequalities, number lines and solving all onto one PowerPoint! That’s waaaaaaay too much. It’s also a little ‘disrespectful’ to the topic of inequality notation. That skill is easily worth a lesson on it’s own! I clearly hadn’t sat down and thought clearly enough about the subtleties of the topic.
You can do loads of good spaced learning with inequalities. We can practice ideas of place value.
Hello!
I’ve cleaned this slide up. Before it looked like this :
EEEEEEEK! This is NOT good slide design. Sir! Is number one 1.9 [] 5 ?
I’ve also added lots of whiteboard questions and a little bit of testing if an inequality is true. After all, inequalities are all about systems and logic tests, really.
I’ve also redrawn all my images of inequality number lines in GeoGebra because they looked gross before.
