A 4 question refresher (covering a few options / decisions re. estimating & rounding), with worked solutions. Useful for mini-plenary, plenary or starter. Designed to open pupils’ minds to variety of estimation/rounding methods required in different circumstances.

With many thanks to Don Steward for inspiration on Saturday 16 March 2019 at ATM London, IoE, UCL, London. Cross links to ratio, sequences and gradient. Square dotty paper is set as back ground for slides; so you can build your own or print and ask your pupils to create their own. I’m certain you have access to more than enough questions on adding fractions. This merely provides pupils with a different means to answer them; visually/geometrically.

The United +Kingdom+ is a constitutional monarchy, so resources around the Diamond Jubilee are useful. Time: aligning 60 years' worth of facts in 60 minutes or 60 seconds! Simply colour in 25 years (silver Jubilee), 50 years (Golden Jubilee) and 60 years (Diamond Jubilee). Fractions: colour & discuss the first quarter of HM QE II's reign, the second quarter, or... maybe thirds, or twelfths, or... you get the idea.

How much will your pupils pay *you* to switch over to a Red Nose Day-themed revision sheet/lesson? Charge them what you can and pay it through to Comic Relief! :-)

Simple exercise. Pupils given rough cooking times for Christmas Turkey; asked to create graph to see if there is a clear relationship and, if there is, to answer a couple of questions.

Explore the poem (you're free to use it if you don&'t derive financial profit from it without sharing that profit with the author!); then invite your pupils to develop their own fractal poems. Maybe another one for triangles. Maybe have them write one using squares. It might be fun to extend the fractal! If you/they can: a proper challenge! :-) P.S. The first verse is explained if you make a hole at the top of triangle, cut out triangle & hang it from thread. It can then be spun (albeit it&';s not lit up!). P.P.S. Table centre-piece for group discussion é building activity also possible!

Help Dr Barnes Wallis's team to position the spotlights on the Lancaster Bombers for the Dambusters' raids led by Commander Guy Gibson. Willing suspension of disbelief required with respect to the numbers (unless you choose to alter them to match researched reality!). Timed for use on the anniversary of the raids (17 May 1943). Roll the theme....

Something inspired by thoughts on sun dials and a once-held belief that the world was flat; possibly a flat disc floating in water. In essence it may provide (at least) a "holding" answer to an old teenage question: "If zero degrees is north (a.k.a. "up" on a 2D map) for bearings questions, why is it east for more advanced trigonometry?". The STEM-Ginger Beer Glass answers a separate (but related) question (or begins to).

Transformations - enlargement Arguably the ultimate 'shrink ray' opportunity and certainly a great opportunity to revise linear enlargement skills in a starter with Gru and Vector. Sounds are courtesy of http://movie-sounds.org.and images are courtesy of Google and First News. As ever, if there is doubt as to whether the images/sounds are subject to copyright, the no-profit, educational purposes and no-charge-advertising/no-charge-product-placement arguments apply: it's not about how much teachers should pay so much as it is about how much they should charge.

Pupils are asked to label a circle with compass directions and angles. The trick is that the circle is already labelled: with months and times [in hours (12 and 24) and minutes]. All jolly confusing... until they stop to process, sort and think! The dice at the edges add potential for an extra question around how to randomly choose a time/angle for something! There is a second circle with weeks, suits of cards, letters of the alphabet and two marathons. More confusion! More thought. Where will your pupils take you with them...

I have simply transformed the work of superb artist angelustenebrae into poster form (A2). Simultaneously beautiful and informative.

A series of links for World Space Week 2020. Designed to spur exploration. The truth is out there…

This is a light hearted starter for a lesson on proportion and chance or simply for a little thinking about proportion and chance before approaching another topic.

Quadratic Linear Equation Inequality

To be used after pupils familiar with use of #Pythagoras’ theorem, properties of #isosceles #triangles and #symmetry and sum of #internal #angles of a triangle. Gentle, steady, step-by-step progress.

Translations-based code word revelation.

This is being posted in Black History Month: an important time in history, for a period, whilst curricula chose (for diplomatics reasons or otherwise) not to teach the young people of the UK about “the End of Empire” or about what preceded it or about life beyond what is now the Commonwealth - not to mention the tensions of integration in past decades as those, in the UK, who were less-well-educated and less-well-travelled had to get their heads around changes to the people and customs they were seeing. It was nothing new in some places. In others it was. “New” meant one thing in one place; another in another. Times have changed, of course, since the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 2010s. What we watch on the internet or TV from overseas feels closer to “home”. What those fortunate few (who can afford the medical insurance, passports, flights, etc) to travel and see overseas and report back has changed too. Often it is forgotten, courtesy of the internet or TV, that the USA is a long way further from the UK than Europe and Africa and the Middle East. It is often more expensive to get to as well. It is also forgotten, at times, that British and American (and indeed European) history are not quite so intertwined, at all times, as we might perceive or wish to believe: fog in the English channel has also been fog in the Atlantic at times. Indeed, there has even been fog between London and other British cities - and between London and the countryside. Everywhere is not anywhere. Anywhere is not everywhere. Even if ubiquitous retail chains like McDonalds, Nandos, Tescos, Morrisons and others may make us feel like the opposite is the case. There was a time, before the Empire (no I don’t mean Star Wars! that’s the point!), that David Olusoga advises saw the Catholic Church of the Mediterranean courting favour with African leaders. There was a time when King James I of England VI of Scotland had an Ambassador located in India. Presumably people travelled in both directions. Marco Polo and “Samurai William”, not to mention Caractacus in Rome, are worth a look too. There’s a big planet out there - and many of the issues raised by Black History Month are human issues: as applicable in Western China or South America or Eastern Europe as they are in the UK; but to different peoples. And, in that context, prejudice is an idea worth being careful with. So, just as the global history of all peoples matters in the other eleven months of the year too, here’s something to prompt a decent debate. It does not even limit itself to skin colour - which is, in itself, is refreshing - as every straight Christian male of African heritage and a certain age will doubtless appreciate.

A gentle starter for those beginning to grasp proportionality. It enables extension by encouraging pupils to design their own questions (with answers). Proportionality is visualised using a familiar item (beans) that they may see at home. Recognising that such a familiar item may be used in this way may lead to experimentation beyond the classroom.

A set of slides to introduce Pythagoras' Theorem like the Rugby Off-side rule: (i) with little extra information [maybe supplemented with explanation]; (ii) with movement; (iii) with different (technical) labelling.

Trigonometric Ratios from first principles & pythagoras’ theorem. Set in context of tracking a star orbiting an Earth assumed to be flat (as it seemingly was at the time the principles were first developed!).