Jonathan Dunning

#MathsToday Student asked a delightful question. If asked to sketch a graph in an exam, could you draw non-orthogonal axes and then do the sketch correctly according to those and still get the marks? I said you’d probably unlock a secret grade.

And Year 7 were doing the same thing in the classroom below, which made me smile!

A picture of Bob Loblaw

#MathsToday Bob Loblaw’s Log Laws

Sev. I can’t say how much I love it.

Any of the generalisation-for-beginners-type ones. Areas of trapeziums on isometric paper comes to mind.

#MathToday but last week. It feels like an important thing about circles theorems that kids draw them while thinking about the structure. Interesting to see how different classes react when asked to work with their 'mind's eye'.

And obviously there were waffles and ice cream for breakfast.

Teacher of Maths

New opening in my lovely department. Wonderful colleagues, very supportive SLT, brilliant kids. Within easy reach of Cambridge and north Essex / Herfordshire. 'Outstanding' across the board from Ofsted in 2024. www.swchs.net/blog/?pid=37...

Teacher of Maths

New opening in my lovely department. Wonderful colleagues, very supportive SLT, brilliant kids. Within easy reach of Cambridge and north Essex / Herfordshire. 'Outstanding' across the board from Ofsted in 2024. www.swchs.net/blog/?pid=37...

I think they might be slightly reformatted Dr Frost Maths ones, actually.

#mathstoday Saw a colleague doing a cute version of a classic.

Old Boniface he took his cheer,
Then he bored a hole through a solid sphere,
Clear through the centre, straight and strong,
And the hole was just six inches long.
Now tell me, when the end was gained,
What volume in the sphere remained?

According my students, this is what I’d look like if transported, TRON-style, inside Desmos.

#MathsToday -ish. I failed to convince everyone in my Y12 class that finding the nth term of p-gon numbers was a suitable end-of-term activity - part of my ongoing campaign to stop them cranking out algebra and consider structure first. But maths did win the fancy dress, so that cheered me up.

#MathsToday -ish. Two tasks from Key Stage 3 that we come back to in Key Stage 5. (Sadly didn't have any of my current Year 13s in Year 7/8, which always makes this more amusing.)

Not for exam technique but it feels useful for the kids just to construct the concentric circles through the vertices. We could maybe do that next year when we split up that oversized Y10 block on similarity congruence and transformations. I’d like constructions built into the congruence part.

Yup. Wiggles and blobs. Who could ask more of a graph?

This was their favourite...

#MathsToday -ish. 'Sir, what the heck is that doing there?'

You too, mentor!

#MathsToday I have been skiving lessons to go on a Heads of Maths beano. Currently on the way back to school where tonight there will be the second mathsy-sounding music event in recent weeks. Missed the Moog Ensemble to go to MathsConf, looking forward to Year 9 with Sö this evening.

pythagoras and surd forms ideas and resources for mathematics teachers of 10 to 16 year olds

donsteward.blogspot.com/2015/04/pyth...

Axiom is great.

There are some on that Chris McGrane book. I think Tim the Trainee has our copy at the mo.

This is the one I do most often with the kids.

(And was also the first thing I used to do with trainees.)

Strong agree. Also, private tutors who counsel against it should be struck off.

Yes. We mark them as a department, so it reflects how I felt flicking through the papers to see what the patterns were

Generally the easy ones, which I reckon is the correct answer.

I just judged it by my emotional reaction to them getting a given question wrong

#MathsToday Adventures in over-complicated mock feedback. Actually, this worked quite well as an opener on what they need to think about when closing the gap.

Not one that was good enough.

I see it as a line being dragged out to the circumference as the sum increases.

Some of them got fairly quickly to an answer for 1x + 1y, at which point I thought we were away. But we needed more time to reflect on other simple cases before the a and b appeared.