One of my favourite films is called “Pay It Forward” (http://gb.imdb.com/title/tt0223897/). This resource is based on the film. There is a young boy who decides to make the world a better place, he completes three good deeds to three different people, and when these people want to thank him he asks them to complete three good deeds to three people and pay it forward. Therefore this resource is designed on that concept except that I have put in a time limit, the deeds are all completed in one day. From that the pupils could work out a general rule and then calculate the number of days it takes a set amount of people to have completed a good deed, or, the numbers of people after a certain amount of days. This incorporates geometric sequences.

This is just a small differentiated resource as part of my planned lessons for year 7 BIDMAS

This resource is designed to check students understanding with negative numbers. Some of the answers are incorrect and the students need to find where they are. Once they find them, they need to write why they think it is incorrect and how they would fix it.

I have always found it difficult to tutor negative numbers adding and subtracting without saying, "two negatives make a positive". Then when I was at university I was taught a way to show negative numbers with + - signs like in science, as it is common that a child would be taught about positive and negative charges in science. Unfortunately this didn't work too well with a year 6 pupil I tutored. I then decided to adapt this method and put positive and negative signs onto some cubes, this way the pupil could physically see what was happening. The pupil much preferred 'hands on' methods anyway and found this easier to understand. Therefore I thank the person who came up with the original idea which enabled me to adapt it to my pupils.

Tuesday’s resource brings together area, perimeter, fractions, decimals and percentages. From this students can practise calculations with decimals when calculating area and perimeter. Reasoning is also present when students are asked to order the shapes in order for size of their perimeter and area before even completing calculations. Students are then asked to complete number sentences finding fractions and percentages of area and perimeter. This resource will be available for free until 13th August from TES

Only two weeks left to go until the end of the summer and the end of these resources. This weeks resources start off where last weeks ended, a crossover problem with probability and expressions. Today’s resource looks at simplifying, expanding and factorising algebraic expressions and combining it with number and probability. A good resource that can be used with a year 7/8 class and can be adapted to add challenge. This will be available for free until Friday 25th August on TES.

The final of this week’s installment of resources is crossover with ratio, area and perimeter. Not only will the students be practising calculating perimeter and area it also gets them thinking about scale factors and what happens to the area (a skill they will not come across until maybe year 9). Lengths are a mixture in fractional and decimal form so they are practicing skills of multiplication and division also.

This week’s first Crossover Resource looks at formulae and data analysis, where students are given data, formula and have to answer questions after inputting the data into the formulae. They then have to decide which is the best graph for them to choose to best display the data. This could be adapted to add in some challenge or more depth my exploring the ways that data could have been collected, why do different people have different journeys and what factors could affect the journey to work. More to come!

To put a large or small number in standard form, a resource in the style of a recipe. There are more resources for this, just email info@mentor4maths.co.uk and I will email them over to you. Any feedback is welcome.

A lesson designed to consolidate knowledge on calculating volume. I have used this with a class of year 10s and they were all engaged. I played a short video, which could be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwc6QklQGFw and designed this sheet for the pupils to work through. At the beginning they have to predict whether the bowling balls will float. Then after working through the activity I played the remainder of the video showing, which bowling balls did float.