Main Activity: Problem Solved! 3
Having seen and used the Year 7 version of this book I was very excited when the Year 9 version turned up. I was looking forward to trying some of the lesson ideas with my older students.
For those of you who haven’t seen the series yet, it has been designed “to help you provide opportunities for your pupils to develop their Problem-Solving, Reasoning and Communicating skills in mathematics&rdsquo;. Without doubt, it achieves this aim.
The Teacher Book contains 26 single lesson activities, laid out in lesson plan form with objectives, key words, resources and a suggested script for all three parts of the lesson. Each activity is complemented by a section in the pupil book with consists of a problem bank of differentiated questions: the teacher book identifies where each level ability should start the exercise.
As well as covering the whole range of mathematical objectives from the NNS Framework for Year 9, the book also contains 5 lessons based around Using and Applying. These are aimed at students working at level 5.
Although the book clearly states that it has extra problems for Gifted and Talented, the questions do not stretch much beyond level 7. I was disappointed by this, since the Year 7 book goes up to level 6.
If you are using the Interacting with Maths Mini-packs there are three lessons linking with the Proportional Reasoning pack and two with the Geometrical Reasoning pack. I particularly liked the one based on conversions between pre-decimal and post-decimal currency. Has the price of the Radio Times risen at the same rate as petrol?
The content I was really pleased to see was the three lessons on Handling Data. All three lessons are based around a school database (sound familiar?) and each lesson in turn cover the areas: “Specify and Plan&rdsquo;, “Collect, Process and Represent&rdsquo; and finally “Interpret and Discuss&rdsquo;. The three lessons lead very nicely through the process of testing the hypothesis “The younger a pupil is, the longer they take to get to school&rdsquo;. It covers the types of question to put on questionnaires, why to take a sample, finding averages, drawing scatter diagrams ands drawing conclusions from data analysis. An ideal introduction to what we now expect them to produce at GCSE.
There is a lesson to suit every teacher in this publication and I would encourage you invest in a class set for your department! Let’s get the pupils explaining how they do things...
Karen Hancock
Assistant Head of Mathematics, Howard of Effingham School
Teacher Book 3 by Brian Fillis with copymasters; ISBN 1 84424 040 1; £25
Student Book 3 (for Year 9); ISBN 1 84424 039 8; £5.50 each (or £24.75 for a pack of 5)
Badger Publishing 01438 356907
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