Maths Bookmarks #2

Mathematics Lessons and Activities

48. International Day of Mathematics March 14: Consider celebrating the International Day of Mathematics on March 14 next year and participating in their events and activities. Also, check out their page on Mathematics is Everywhere, as well as Mathigon’s Origami page, where you can download nets of intricate solids, such as the truncated icosidodecahedron.
49. Numeracy Skills: The Numeracy Skills website was decommissioned at the beginning of this year (for resources, visit its successor, the NSW Education’s Curriculum website). However, it still contains some useful information, such as numeracy strategies for students. As of 14/07/2021, the website is unavailable.
50. reSolve: A mathematics education website dedicated towards inquiry-based learning. Check out their teaching resources here, such as their Packaging Designer (Year 10 – Measurement and Geometry, Rates and Ratios) and What’s In A Name (Year 7 – Statistics) units.
51. Make It Count: Resources made available by the AAMT to support the mathematical learning outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Consider browsing their units of learning, as well as the findings they generated from different clusters of schools.
52. Underground Mathematics: A-Level (UK) mathematics resources developed by the University of Cambridge. Parts of the website are still under construction, but they have complete units of work ready to browse, e.g. Circles and Vector Geometry.
53. Would You Rather Math: “Asking students to choose a path and justify it with math”, e.g. 9th – 12th Category. Consider making your own ‘Would You Rather’ problems, e.g. from (local) best buy deals, transport problems, probability questions.
54. Excel Examples: Tutorials for performing calculations in Microsoft Excel, written by MathsLinks. (Probably) one of the most useful thing to teach students early on is how to use absolute (cell) referencing in Excel.
55. Parallel: Each week, new mathematics challenges are posted by Simon Singh as part of his Parallel Maths Project – for example, consider checking out his Good Will Hunting ‘parallelogram’.
56. Number of the Day: Begin by selecting a number range, as well as the number of questions and their difficulty – the website will generate a random number with a series of random arithmetic questions based on that number. You could, for instance, make a class set and give one question each to students at the beginning or end of a lesson. Alternatively, give a large set to groups of students for them to compete against one another. MathsLinks has a similar version on their MathsStarters website.
57. Visual Patterns: In each image, Fawn provides a visual pattern, along with information about step/iteration 43 of the pattern. The intended goal is for your students to use the available information to derive a corresponding equation. You could also get your students to come up with their own visual patterns (perhaps, in order to set their peers a challenge).
58. Calcudoku: Website that generates Sudoku-style puzzles, with additional rules (on top of the usual sudoku row/column rules) – the grid is partitioned into sections, and each section requires all of the numbers inside it to satisfy a rule (e.g. the numbers should sum to 5). Challenge yourself today with a difficult 9×9 puzzle.
59. The Concord Consortium: American-based STEM website filled with resources for Science, Engineering, and Mathematics. If you’re particularly interested in using R (R Studio) in your classroom, check out their Math Modelling with R sequence.
60. Between 2 Numbers: The format – (typically) two facts are given, both involving some number, quantity or rate. A question involving both facts is then posed for students to solve. A nice way to introduce large or small numbers from science (e.g. astronomy), technology, engineering, economics and popular culture.
61. Interactive Mathematics: Interactive applets and lessons about various mathematical concepts. You may find their calculus applets particularly useful, e.g. Calculus First Principles; Derivatives Graphs – Involving Discontinuities; and Newton’s Method.
62. Calculus Applets using GeoGebra: A collection of GeoGebra applets designed for teaching key concepts from Calculus, including limits, differentiation, and integration.
63. Units of Work: Rich tasks and other units of work published under AMSI Calculate. Consider checking out their resources for Number & Algebra, as well as Measurement & Geometry. AMSI also publish Years 11 and 12 Curriculum materials as part of their Supporting Australian Mathematics Project.
64. YDM-CCP Teacher Resources: YuMi Deadly Mathematics teaching resources (from K to Year 9), built around the RAMR framework (Reality, Abstraction, Mathematics, Reflection). Consider also giving their MITI Investigations (rich tasks) a try – inside, you will find mathematics investigations for Years 7 to 9. See: 7PS (Fair Game), 8A3 (Building a Mathematics Structure), and 9S1 (How to Lie with Statistics).
65. Graphing Stories: Short 15-second videos designed to act as a stimulus for students to construct a graph. Try also making your own short videos of graphable situations for your own class (or setting your students the task of creating videos at home).
66. Math Teaching Materials: A collection of interesting (and challenging) mathematics problems, courtesy of the Phillips Exeter Academy. Offer your students some challenge problems to solve throughout the week to keep them mathematically curious.
67. Experiencing Mathematics: A virtual exhibition of many mathematical situations. Each activity can be found on a separate webpages (although, the sound effects are somewhat annoying – you can mute the webpage though). Alternatively, download the pdf file and complete the activities in the classroom. Highlights: Pascal’s Triangle in Colour; 3 Wells and 3 Houses; Checkmate the Queens?; The Syracuse Conjecture (also known as Collatz Conjecture); and The Shortest Path (related to the Brachistochrone curve)

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