Earliest recommended Year group: Year 10. Pupils are given the nth term of a sequence and are asked to find specific (non consecutive) terms in the sequence. It is the Fibonacci sequence. The task involves surds and indices. Then they are asked to prove that the ratio of consecutive terms tends to the golden ratio. This is from the “Something in Common” collection of resources by John Burke. They allow consolidation of key skills, prevent students from copying each other (as all the questions are different), make marking and assessing easy for the teacher (as all the answers are the same!), and provide a lovely extra challenge for students as they try to figure out exactly what is going on! To access the full collection, and read John’s background notes, please visit: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/common.htm

Earliest recommended Year group: Year 12. Skew lines in 3d space in vector form. How close do they get? This is from the “Something in Common” collection of resources by John Burke. They allow consolidation of key skills, prevent students from copying each other (as all the questions are different), make marking and assessing easy for the teacher (as all the answers are the same!), and provide a lovely extra challenge for students as they try to figure out exactly what is going on! To access the full collection, and read John’s background notes, please visit: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/common.htm

The 53rd in Mr Barton's Autograph Video tutorial series. Following on from our work on worksheets last week, this time we take a look at how Autograph can be used to very quickly create an incredibly flexible number line. This can then be used in class to help with the teaching of topics including place value, scales, sequences and negative numbers. Clicking on the web-link you can see all the videos in this series.

The 58th in Mr Barton's Autograph Video tutorial series. A feature of Autograph that many people are unaware of (or close down as quickly as possible!) is the Autograph Keyboard. In this video we take a look at some of the useful things that the Autograph keyboard can do, both in the program itself and in other applications. You emails may never be the same again! Clicking on the web-link you can see all the videos in this series.

The 57th in Mr Barton's Autograph Video tutorial series. An incredibly useful feature of Autograph is the ability to hide a variety of things. These include points, shapes and lines. In this video we look at how to hide objects and then suggest a few interesting applications for the classroom, involving transformations and the equations of lines. Now you see them, now you don’t! Clicking on the web-link you can see all the videos in this series.

The 55th in Mr Barton's Autograph Video tutorial series. Part 2 of the Transformations of Functions Trilogy of Autograph videos. This time we take a peek at a nice way of getting the exact shape function you are looking for without having to worry about a horrendous equation. Clicking on the web-link you can see all the videos in this series.

An Autograph Player activity to investigate the gradients of perpendicular lines. 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.

Douglas Butler, the creator of Autograph, has produced 7 high quality tutorial videos to help you get the most out of the software. In this video we take a quick tour through www.autograph-maths.com and www.tsm-resources.com, finding videos, data, images, blogs, etc, images to support Autograph. Also available on TES are my own weekly set of Autograph videos, and lots of Autograph Player Activities that don’t even require Autograph to be installed!

Douglas Butler, the creator of Autograph, has produced 7 high quality tutorial videos to help you get the most out of the software. This tutorial video looks at using Autograph to explore the Binomial and normal distributions, and the Central Limit Theorem. Also available on TES are my own weekly set of Autograph videos, and lots of Autograph Player Activities that don’t even require Autograph to be installed!

Earliest recommended Year group: Year 12. Projectiles. You want to shoot a monkey hanging in a tree. But he's a cheeky monkey and at the exact moment you fire, he lets go and falls to the ground. Knowing this, where should you aim to be sure of hitting your target? This is from the “Something in Common” collection of resources by John Burke. They allow consolidation of key skills, prevent students from copying each other (as all the questions are different), make marking and assessing easy for the teacher (as all the answers are the same!), and provide a lovely extra challenge for students as they try to figure out exactly what is going on! To access the full collection, and read John’s background notes, please visit: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/common.htm

An Autograph Player activity where students investigate rotations by playing golf. 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.

The 59th in Mr Barton's Autograph Video tutorial series. Another incredibly useful feature of Autograph is the ability to import images onto the graph page. In this video we take a look at how easy it is to import images into Autograph, and then take a look at some potential lesson applications, including working out the equation of lines on the London Underground and helping out the Human Cannonball!. Clicking on the web-link you can see all the videos in this series.

An Autograph Player activity designed to help look at line symmetry in different quadrilaterals. 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.

The 51st in Mr Barton's Autograph Video tutorial series. Following a request from Science teacher Mr Richardson, here is a video explaining how you can use Autograph to fit functions to various data sets. It doesn’t matter if the relationship in your data is linear, quadratic or exponential decay, you can be sure that Autograph can handle it. Clicking on the web-link you can see all the videos in this series.

The second of the Trigonometric Trilogy! Following on from last week’s work, we take a look at how we can use Autograph to help students practise finding the sizes of missing angles in right-angled triangles using Trigonometry. The advantage of doing this on Autograph is you can easily generate as many examples as you want and quickly check the students’ answers. One more part to come next week…

Douglas Butler, the creator of Autograph, has produced 7 high quality tutorial videos to help you get the most out of the software. This tutorial video looks at using Autograph to introduce Calculus (differentiation and integration) and Trigonometry. Also available on TES are my own weekly set of Autograph videos, and lots of Autograph Player Activities that don’t even require Autograph to be installed!

Douglas Butler, the creator of Autograph, has produced 7 high quality tutorial videos to help you get the most out of the software. This tutorial video takes you through some reflections, enlargement and rotations, then some work on circle geometry. Also available on TES are my own weekly set of Autograph videos, and lots of Autograph Player Activities that don’t even require Autograph to be installed!

Earliest recommended Year group: Year 13. Pupils are given different segments of circles and asked to calculate their volumes of revolution. They all have the same volume. This is from the “Something in Common” collection of resources by John Burke. They allow consolidation of key skills, prevent students from copying each other (as all the questions are different), make marking and assessing easy for the teacher (as all the answers are the same!), and provide a lovely extra challenge for students as they try to figure out exactly what is going on! To access the full collection, and read John’s background notes, please visit: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/common.htm

A free online Autograph Player activity that challenges students to predict the number of distinct planes of symmetry of this cuboid. Can they then discover the equations of these planes? 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.

Earliest recommended Year group: Year 10. Discovery of two circle theorems. Pupils mark out angles on a chord and cut them out and compare. This is from the “Something in Common” collection of resources by John Burke. They allow consolidation of key skills, prevent students from copying each other (as all the questions are different), make marking and assessing easy for the teacher (as all the answers are the same!), and provide a lovely extra challenge for students as they try to figure out exactly what is going on! To access the full collection, and read John’s background notes, please visit: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/common.htm