This is a video to accompany my article for the TES Magazine ('Dotty Thinking') that offers up a simple, fun idea to get students engaged and making meaningful data comparisons, including mean, median, mode, range and a whole host of statistical diagrams including cumulative frequency, histograms and bar charts. Click the links below to see the article and download the resources (Video tutorial, PowerPoint and Excel). Ideal for KS3 and GCSE students.

Well, what a first episode of the TES Maths Podcast we have! Probability, Ofsted, micromorts and my guest threatening to punch someone! Many thanks once again to Mark McCourt for being such a wonderful first guest. Below you will find the audio to listen to now, or an mp3 to download for later. You will also find a document containing links to all the features and resources discussed, as well as a link to the podcast forum discussion. We hope to have the episode on iTunes soon so you can subscribe and never miss an episode!

In this episode, we talk everything from A-level resources to tracking pupils’ progress, with bucket loads of rich tasks thrown in for good measure. More importantly, we discuss how best to use these rich tasks in the classroom, with pupils of all ages and abilities. Our general theme is the best ways to introduce algebra to students, and what to avoid. Alison Kiddle, from NRICH, was a fantastic guest as left me with lots of problems to keep my brain ticking over. Please feel free to share your thoughts below, and continue the discussion by clicking the link to the Forum thread.

Our new TES Maths Podcast is now in the can, and what a very enjoyable podcast to record it was. I was very lucky to be joined by Jeremy and Dietmar from King’s College London, to talk about their very exciting ICCAMS project. But I would never let them get away with just that, so as well we managed to fit in a chat about falling standards in maths, advice on running discussion based lessons, and some festive maths ideas as well! In the Word document you will find links to all the resources, ideas and activities discussed, and a link to the Forum discussion as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed recording this podcast. My guest was Celia Hoyles, the outgoing Director of the NCETM -The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics, and she proved to be a fascinating guest. We talked about topics including Numeracy Across the Curriculum, the midfield of misconceptions that is Fractions, and the use of technology in maths lessons. Click on the video to stream the podcast, or download the MP3, and please visit the Forum to carry on the conversation!

A Algebra lesson activity on sequences and creating equivalent algebraic expressions. This pilot resource has been kindly shared by the ICCAMS project, based at Kings College, London. The project aims to raise students’ attainment and engagement in key mathematical areas. To find out more, and to access the pilot resources, please visit the link above.

I am a huge fan of the Royal Statistical Society, and since they have become a Partner with TES I really hope their amazing resources can reach a wider audience. All of their activities are based around the ideal of making the study of data both practical and engaging. In this resource students are challenged to clean up some “dirty data” that has been meddled with by four sneak students. In the video we also look at some ways that we might extend this activity to get even more out of it. Lovely stuff!

A podcast sharing ideas for teaching and learning mathematics. Created for secondary and high school teachers of mathematics. Craig Barton visits the South East Asian Maths Competition in Bangkok to find out what it's like to teach at international schools. Includes an interview with world renowned Canadian mathematician, Ron Lancaster about teacher training, problem solving and math. The TES Maths podcast is now available on iTunes www.tes.co.uk/mathspodcast

An Algebra lesson on writing and simplifying algebraic expressions. This pilot resource has been kindly shared by the ICCAMS project, based at Kings College, London. The project aims to raise students’ attainment and engagement in key mathematical areas. To find out more, and to access the pilot resources, please visit the link above.

An Algebra starter activity on the size of answers and expressions. This pilot resource has been kindly shared by the ICCAMS project, based at Kings College, London. The project aims to raise students’ attainment and engagement in key mathematical areas. To find out more, and to access the pilot resources, please visit the link above.

This time we welcomed teacher, blogger, tweeter and best-selling author Will Emeny to the show. In order to take full advantage of having a full time teacher in our presence, I changed the format around a little for the episode. So, you will find not one but two Show and Tell topics. The first is about effective ways of differentiating in the maths classroom, and the second is ways of teaching maths in context, to hook the students in. Links to all the ideas and resources discussed can be found below. Subscribe on iTunes by visiting www.tes.co.uk/mathspodcast

A Number starter activity on equivalent and comparing fractions. This pilot resource has been kindly shared by the ICCAMS project, based at Kings College, London. The project aims to raise students’ attainment and engagement in key mathematical areas. To find out more, and to access the pilot resources, please visit the link above.

A free online Autograph Player activity that allows students to create visually pleasing rectangles, collect data from classmates, all leading to the golden ratio. You can use this activity on the interactive whiteboard, or for your students to investigate on their own. Autograph does not need to be installed to use this activity (so your students can even use it at home), but you will need to install the free Autograph Player add-on (instructions given after clicking the link). For a full list of Autograph Activities, please click on the other web-link.

QR codes are a wonderful, free and relatively simple piece tool that can be used incredibly effectively in the classroom. All you need to do is hop onto a website that allows you to generate QR codes for free, create some text or a web-link, and then let your imagination run wild! David Gale has done exactly that by creating this QR code treasure hunt for revising the key concepts from the Statistics 1 module. Tell your students that for once they can use their phones in lessons, and set them off around the trail. Great stuff!

I have not seen a website with revision videos as good as The Maths Teacher. Not only is the coverage of GCSE and A Level maths very comprehensive, the videos are clear, professional and easy to understand, and best of all each one comes with downloadable notes and examples for the students to practise their newly acquired skills. Amazing stuff! In this video we look at the website and discuss a couple of ways of using it to support students’ independent study.

A Number starter activity on comparing fractions. This pilot resource has been kindly shared by the ICCAMS project, based at Kings College, London. The project aims to raise students’ attainment and engagement in key mathematical areas. To find out more, and to access the pilot resources, please visit the link above.

An Algebra starter activity on sequences and reasoning. This pilot resource has been kindly shared by the ICCAMS project, based at Kings College, London. The project aims to raise students’ attainment and engagement in key mathematical areas. To find out more, and to access the pilot resources, please visit the link above.

Autograph Activities use a free piece of software that does not require you to have the full version of Autograph. This means you can use the 100 or so activities on TES in your classroom, or set them for your students to try at home. Each activity comes ready-made with instructions and plenty of interactivity and challenges to get your students thinking. In this video we look at two examples, one on the transformation of curves, and the other on practising working out missing lengths and angles using trigonometry. I hope you find them useful.

We open up this new series of WebWhizz videos with an absolutely belter! Jonny Griffiths is the man behind the amazing RISPs and Make Statistics Vital website, and he has produced again with Carom Maths – a website containing 40 activities aimed at bridging the gap between A Level and university maths. What I particularly like about these activities is how they make use of software such as Excel, Autograph and GeoGebra to bring the topics to life and allow students to investigate further. Here we look at 3 of the activities covering lots of areas of mathematics.

A free online Autograph Player activity that allows students to check, visualise and investigate calculations involving the standard normal distribution. You can use this activity on the interactive whiteboard, or for your students to investigate on their own. Autograph does not need to be installed to use this activity (so your students can even use it at home), but you will need to install the free Autograph Player add-on (instructions given after clicking the link). For a full list of Autograph Activities, please click on the other web-link.

An Algebra starter activity on co-ordinates and straight line graphs . This pilot resource has been kindly shared by the ICCAMS project, based at Kings College, London. The project aims to raise students’ attainment and engagement in key mathematical areas. To find out more, and to access the pilot resources, please visit the link above.