We are very fortunate in maths education to have so many hard working teachers and tutors preparing materials we can use between GCSE Papers 1 and 2, and later between Papers 2 and 3. My final timetabled lesson with my Year 11 class is a double on Friday 24th May, in which I plan to use the 1st Class Maths Practice Paper 2. We also have a 1.5 hour session over half term (optional for ..read more

We disagree about a lot of things in maths education but I think there’s one thing that makes total sense to everyone: we should never assess students on content they haven’t yet been taught. Doing so has absolutely no benefit to their learning.Picture the scene: A Year 10 student works hard and wants to do well. They enjoy maths and they always get good marks in end of topic tests. In the summer ..read more

Tickets are now on sale for the book launch of Love Triangle by Matt Parker.If you fancy coming you'll need to move fast as these tickets will sell quickly!Information here: lovetrianglelaunch.weebly.com.A lot of my readers attended the launch of Matt Parker's book Humble Pi back in 2019 and had a fantastic time. They will be pleased to hear that Fox Dog Studios are making another appearance!& ..read more

Welcome to my 179th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.1. Maths AdvanceI blogged about Maths Advance in Gems 173 - it's a website full of excellent challenge questions, perfect for high attaining classes. I've now had the pleasure of meeting the author of the website, George Bowman, at two recent conferences. Here are a couple of ..read more

I've blogged and presented about methods for finding a Highest Common Factor and Lowest Common Multiple numerous times, but I still think that The Factor Method* deserves a bit more love. [*also known as The Ladder Method, and various other names]When I trained to be a teacher I was told that the Venn Method was THE way to find HCFs and LCMs. A few years later a colleague showed me a very ..read more

Welcome to my 178th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.1. Inverse ProportionI really like this tweet from @catrionateaches. When teaching inverse proportion I always talk about constant products but then I head straight into the formula y = k/x. Catriona suggests a subtle change in method. 2. Graph TransformationsMathsPad has ..read more

Welcome to my 177th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.1. MathsLinksI discovered the website MathsLinks through TES. It's run by maths teacher Kenneth Stafford. He has collated lots of resources in one place. For example, on his GCSE Questions by Topics page he has included links to websites such as Corbett Maths and Maths Genie for ..read more

I'm teaching A level again this year after a five year break. If you're interested, here's a bit of background on how this came to be... I taught A level right from the start of my teaching career, including during my PGCE and NQT year. I thought it was common practice to teach A level when training, but I now realise I was lucky to get this opportunity - many maths teachers go their entire ..read more

Welcome to my 176th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.1. 1st Class Maths1stclassmaths.com has always been full of incredibly high quality resources, and the recent additions are no exception. The GCSE revision resources (designed for both Edexcel and AQA) contain original GCSE-style questions which are very well written.I also love ..read more

Craig Barton and I recently ran an in-person course for maths teachers, Marvellous Maths 3. If you missed out, you'll be pleased to hear that the recordings and resources are now available in the form of an online course. The course is available here: craigbarton.podia.com/marvellous-maths-3 for the same price as the in-person course (£150 + VAT).If you had a ticket for Marvellous Maths 3, you ..read more