#mathstoday

1st square root of 1 = ?

This week I was explaining to students about the invisible 2 when we write square root, and they asked me if we could have a '1st' square root. I loved this question - and that i'd never considered it before #mathstoday

I hate to sound like a broken record but I LOVE @mathspadnicola.bsky.social @mathspadjames.bsky.social!!!

Mathspad makes children of all abilities THINK HARD.

I took my strategy from the maths department at totteridge academy. I pick 5 students who made an error and prepare a shadow question for them. I give the class time in small groups to fix errors and then reveal the shadow questions, if the kids can now answer them, their whole group get praised.

A collection of functions will "real-life" uses such as Pythagoras and the area of a triangle.

How often do we talk about functions having useful outputs?

It's easy to "teach" functions without actually teaching what a function is for. This task might help.

Hi Bluesky, We are getting a lot of emails at the moment from teachers who are looking for schools that are using MathsPad as their curriculum/SOW. If you are one of these schools and would like to connect with others, please can you reply to this post so I can point people your way. Thank you!

My #MathsConf37 workshop choices:

1 - Rebecca Sanders
2 - @justmaths.bsky.social
3 - Amy How
4 - @teachsolutions.bsky.social
5 - @amercermaths.bsky.social

Join me with @lasalleed.bsky.social, get your ticket here: completemaths.com/community/mathsconf37

6 questions of the form: On a copy of this diagram, mark the cointerior/corresponding/alternate angle. The solutions have been drawn on, with the transversals highlighted in yellow.

6 diagrams with some angles given, including ones not needed to answer the question, and one missing that has to be found. They have been answered with the transversals highlighted in yellow.

I used to encourage students to highlight F or Z shapes for parallel lines questions, but today I just told Y9 to highlight the transversal. It’s an easier first step, and they were almost always then able to immediately see what to do next.

Also, I love these MathsPad questions!

#MathsToday

I like these conversations. The biggest question I always have about maths is: why is differentiation so convenient??! And how does integration actually work. And why are they inverses? I need a short, lucid book to read about this if you know any?

New! My 186th gems post. Ideas, resources and updates for maths teachers. 💎

www.resourceaholic.com/2025/02/5-ma...

#ukmathschat #mathstoday #iteachmath

In #MathsToday had some lovely discussion work using this T or F mathspad resource about using products of primes which also lead into discussing how to determine if a number is square using it's product of primes. Finished with working out as many number facts about 2025 as we could #iteachmaths

Some of our new Rounding with Significant Figures: Arrange the Digits Puzzles - some nice reasoning required!

Full MathsPad January 2025 update: www.mathspad.co.uk

New! My 184th gems post. Ideas, updates and resources for maths teachers. 💎

www.resourceaholic.com/2025/01/5-ma...

#UKMathsChat #MathsToday

32 bubbles arranged in a circle. The text in the center says, "Arrange the integers from 1 to 32 in a circle so that every neighboring pair sums to a perfect square"

A classic #math #puzzle
#iTeachMath

A card sort of mathematical expressions and their representations.

In #MathsToday I used this card sort
with a small group of pupils.

Worked out surprisingly well and a couple of them even managed to fill in all the missing values.

Match the non linear graphs to their equations written in factor form.

Enjoyed this with year 11 today:

New! A quick gems post - ideas, resources and updates for maths teachers. 💎

www.resourceaholic.com/2024/10/5-ma...

#UKMathsChat

You are given that 48 × 49 = 2352. a) How much would it cost to buy 47 items at £49 each? b) Write 2352 as a product of prime factors. c) What time will it be exactly 2350 hours from now?

In #MathsToday, part c of this question caught everybody out, and not for the reason I was intending when I wrote it!

(The time when answering the question was about 3pm.)

“Factor” in maths and “Factory” in not maths have the same root etymologically. In essence they both refer to components that build towards something else.
Here ends today’s reading.

I tried a new first lesson meet & greet this year. I put numbered mats on each desk, and at the threshold I I directed st’s to their correct seat, ie “hello James, you’re going front row, number 7”. This worked better than any system I’ve tried in 7 years of teaching. 👍 #Edusky

If the chance is 0, the event is.... Set of questions.

I decided to start the probability scale this year with questions like 'if the event is unlikely, what could its probability be as a fraction?'. I think it revealed a lot about their knowledge of FDP and helped solidify the scale as going from 0 to 1. I followed it with:

The Incredible Sine Wave and its Uses | Gresham College The beautiful sine wave turns out to have a huge number of practical applications, from the motion of springs, to waves in the sea, to sound waves, light waves and more. It is curious that the functio...

It always puzzled me at school what happens when you press the sin cos and tan buttons on a calculator. I think this video about the beautiful sine wave is incredible - if you are interested in the history of trigonometry this is really worth a watch: www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/si...