Mathematics Teaching 208 - May 2008

Visualising series - Hasan Unal

Hasan Unal describes some different ways of visualising the sum of a series.

PDF to accompany Hasan Unal’s article

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Pull-up nets - Liz Meenan

Liz Meenan describes an easy and exciting way of making 3D solids from their nets without the need for any glue.

Nets and additional material to support Liz Meenan’s article

Thinking conics - Richard Lewis

Richard Lewis, a mathematics education student, describes his mathematical thinking when working on an assignment on conics.

PDF to accompany Richard Lewis’s article

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Theorem of mystery: part 1 - Francis Lopez-Real

In the first of a two-part series, Francis Lopez-Real offers some problems and challenges associated with ‘The mystery theorem’.

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Making mathematics relevant for students in Bali - Pryde Nubea Sema

Pryde Nubea Sema describes how he is working with colleagues to improve the mathematical experiences of his students.

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"It's branded in our brains!" - Sue Caldwell

Sue Caldwell asks whether the spiral curriculum is simply taking students round in ever decreasing circles.

Introducing exponentials - Derek White

Derek White describes a lesson Dick Tahta taught to Derek’s sixth formers at Backwell Comprehensive School, North Somerset, in 1974.

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Life after death by PowerPoint - Jenni Ingram

Jenni Ingram describes how she uses PowerPoint to enhance her students’ learning.

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Metaphor and metonymy - Alf Coles

Alf Coles reflects on how Dick Tahta and Caleb Gattegno demonstrated that mathematics teaching could be powerful, playful and relevant.

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Deconstructing calculation methods, part 4: Division - Ian Thompson

In the final article of a series of four, Ian Thompson deconstructs the primary national strategy’s approach to written division. The other three articles in the series appeared in MT202, MT204 and MT206.

Promoting positive attitudes - Paul Wilson

Paul Wilson discusses the impact of pupils’ attitudes on their attainment in mathematics and the importance of fostering positive attitudes.

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The Fractionkitapplet - Roger Duke, Alan Graham and Sue Johnston-Wilder

Roger Duke, Alan Graham and Sue Johnston-Wilder describe a research initiative teaching fractions to 9- to 12-year-old pupils.

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Mathematical thinking with lower-attaining pupils - Liz Woodham

Liz Woodham outlines her Master's research into using NRICH resources to promote mathematical enrichment for all.

Number grid puzzles - Derek Ball

These puzzles were generated by the program Number grids, from the ATM CD Interactive Mathematics.

You can buy Interactive Mathematics here

Natural understandings of arithmetic - Yuliana Teper

It is well known that American students are fearful of mathematics.

Arms and the Spirograph® - Paul Stephenson

The article discusses the trifolium image, which is animated as a flicker-book throughout MT206.

The decimal point and the ths - Steve Chinn

Children’s misunderstandings of fundamental mathematical concepts tend to persevere, often into adulthood, and these confusions frequently underlie maths anxiety.

Five minutes of filtering in Excel - Sidney Tyrell

Excel’s Data Filter is an excellent tool which enables you to look at subsets of data; it is an extremely handy admin tool and is also useful for exploratory data analysis.

Crossing the boundary - Graham Curson

“Sir, how old are you?” There is a lot of mileage in responding to such impertinent individuals with: “Two billion seconds.”

The 11+ disaster - Hana Stewart

So the 11+ is not a great idea, it makes children grow apart after seven years of being together and makes some of them feel second class, which is not a good thing at our age.

Reflections - John Dabell

Surely we should be saying ‘thinking outside the regular square prism’, or ‘thinking outside the regular hexahedron’? We spend so much of our lives inside rectangular prisms and we are constantly encouraged to think outside of them.

Webwatch - Oliver Bowles

Oliver Bowles has a dream... If every teacher across the land had their own website, on which they made all their resources available...

16 Correlation Street - Jonny Griffiths

Correlation Street is a mixture of what happens, what I would like to happen, and what I am glad does not happen in my classroom.

News from ATM

ATM is included in discussions about the format of assessment with the examination boards and trials have now begun.

Scotlines

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles north I am about to start week 10 of a 12-week term – no half terms here, but at least it is getting lighter.

Puzzle page

Puzzles from Phil Dodds, Colin Foster and Derek Ball.