MyMaths is an easy-to-use online subscription for teaching and learning primary maths. Accessible anywhere with an internet connection, it is an invaluable tool for working both remotely and in the classroom. A subscription gives your school access to hundreds of mathematically rich, engaging activities with automated marking and results tracking. Here are five reasons to sign […]
By Rehana Akhtar It has always been a recurring thought to me over my years of teaching as to ‘Why do pupils need to be re-taught and why do they not retain key skills and concepts?’ The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and […]
If a week is a long time in politics, then 21 years must be an eternity. Yet I can still remember the furore when Stephen Byers – then education secretary – was interviewed on the radio about government plans to improve numeracy in school and got his calculations wrong. No journalists have tried to trip […]
Accuracy in mathematical language I was preparing some revised GCSE booster lessons for MyMaths recently on the topic of Quadratic Equations. In some examples I requested that answers be left ‘in surd form’. By this I meant those irrational solutions coming from completing the square or using the quadratic formula. My editor’s response made me stop […]
Visiting my home town of Leeds recently, my relatives took me to a restaurant in the city centre called The Alchemist. The sign above the door and on their business cards caught my interest. All kinds of maths sprung to my mind. Symmetry. Construction. Pythagoras. Trigonometry. Surds. Proof. The symbol could be presented to students […]
The square root sign Nowadays if any definition issue or technicality arises my first response is to trawl the internet, which often leads me down diverse paths. This one took me to square root and cube root signs. Wikipedia suggests the tick sign first appeared in 1525, along with + and -, in a work […]