by Sharon Derbyshire | Sep 30, 2012 | Events, Games & Puzzles, Teaching Ideas & Tools |
Halloween is such a fun time of year and it’s great to try and bring some of that excitement into your classroom, I’ve never found a really good Halloween themed resource so at Number-Loving we set about trying to make some! To kick things off we have a Mathematical Whodunit, this is born out of my love (and unbeaten record) of the board game Cluedo. The setting is the hotel ‘Spooksville’, the victim is the elusive ‘Mr Black’ and there are six suspects.
The idea is that students work in groups of 5-7, each assuming the identity of one of the characters. They each get a character card which gives them answers to three questions. On their turn they can ask a fellow player one of these question. There’s also a pool of general evidence for students to look at to help them in determining who the murderer is.
The task is quite complex so depending on the class you may need to structure it for them – e.g. tell them for the first 10 minutes they have to find out about the crime itself, then for the next ten they have to find out who had a motive, then who had the means and finally who had opportunity. But if your class are quite used to mysteries and open tasks then you can probably just leave them to it! The Maths is mostly functional and includes:
- Interpreting time in 12 hour and 24 hour
- Maps and scales
- Speed, distance and time
- Reading timetables and mileage charts
- Reading bank statements
- Applying logic and working methodically
In the resource I have summarised a few alternative ways to play – one idea being to get members of the department dressed up as the characters and play the game at an open evening or collapsed timetable day.
Download the file here : Mathematical_Whodunit
I haven’t used this with a class yet – I’m going to save it for my last lesson before Halloween, if anyone does use it I’d love to hear how it goes. You can tweet us @numberloving.
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by Sharon Derbyshire | Sep 17, 2012 | Games & Puzzles, Teaching Ideas & Tools |
To kick things off how about a game of taboo? Taboo is a really simple, fun and occasionally frustrating game where you have to describe a word to your partner without using the three ‘taboo’ words. These are an amazing way of consolidating key words and concepts as well as promoting communication and team work!
Instructions 
This works well if students work in fours and split into two teams of two. Team one have say, two minutes to get through as many words as they can with one member describing and one person guessing. Whilst this is happening team two are timing them and keeping a close eye on the ‘taboo’ words to make sure they are not used. Once the time is up the teams swap over.
In the style of many of our resources these cards are differentiated. Each set comes with 8 green and 8 red cards. The words are taken from the key vocabulary in the national strategy, the red cards are words from year 7 and 8, the green cards are words from year 9. Students could split the cards into two piles and pick which one to play with or you could direct them, I often suggest they get 2 points for a green word and 1 point for a red word.
Variations on the game
Once a word has been guessed additional points can be gained by guessing what the ‘taboo’ words are on the card
Students get blank versions and make their own with the key words from a specific topic or unit!
Get in touch @numberloving and check out our free and premium resources in our NumberLoving Store.
by Sharon Derbyshire | Jul 21, 2012 | Events, Games & Puzzles, Revision, Teaching Ideas & Tools |
Thanks to @steelemaths @ThisisLiamM, @InteractMaths, @jonsmcest and @jlc1602 for kindly sharing some pictures of their students using our ideas and resources. Number Loving out and about…
Balloon modelling with fractions from our maths party blog
Cocktails using ratio and proportion from our crazy cocktails blog
Jubilee themed mysteries from our jubilee blog
Calculator racing from @numberloving on twitter
A brilliant mystery inspired by our post Mystery and Mathematics
(download the full resource on the TES here)
Thank you to everyone who’s tried our ideas, if you have any pictures we would love to see them, tweet us @numberloving. Keep posted as we’ll shortly be blogging about some projects to keep you busy this summer! Get in touch @numberloving and check out our free and premium resources in our NumberLoving Store.
by Sharon Derbyshire | Jul 3, 2012 | Events, Games & Puzzles, Teaching Ideas & Tools |
The summer holidays are almost upon us so here are some of our top resources and activities to see you through until the end of term. Have a great summer holiday from Number Loving!
Olympic themed resources
If you are after an Olympic themed lesson then try out our Olympic top trumps and Olympic mysteries. With four mysteries to pick from and the solutions included there should be something for most abilities.
Also Kentishman has shared a wide variety of good quality Olympic themed starters which are well worth a look.
Other bits and bobs
Craig Barton has put together a collection of the top ten end of term resources available on the TES (try saying that quickly!) have a look here for some great ideas.
One of the best end of term games I have come across is Paul Collins’ Pirate game which is available on the TES here. Basically students place money and other symbols in a 7×7 grid, as you call out the grid references they get whatever they had placed in that square. With symbols such as the ‘steal’ which allows them to steal another persons money and the skull and crossbones which lets them wipe out a whole rows scores this is a very lively game which the students will love. I plan on putting a bit more Maths in (for example a ‘squared’ square which lets them square their total).
I discovered these blank Facebook profiles on the TES a while ago and was thinking of a way to use them. I plan on giving students a famous Mathematician and getting them to research this person in order to fill in their Facebook profile. Printed A3 and laminated they should make for an interesting display. I adapted the one off the TES slightly you can download it here.
This week I am doing a ‘sign post project’ with my Year 7’s to consolidate the work we did on measures and conversions. I wanted to put some sign posts up around the school with the distances to different places on, e.g. Science block 30m, Manchester 150 miles. So I decided to get the students to make them. I have split the class into groups and have given each group a different location within the school where their sign post will go. They’ve had to work out the distance from this place to other locations within the school and further afield, then convert their measures so they were all in m, km and miles. They’ve used trundle wheels and tape measures in the school and Google earth for the others. Here’s the PowerPoint I used with a bit more info on.
I often use my CSI mysteries towards the end of term for a fun lesson which still involves a lot of maths. See the collection on the TES here.
I’ll also be using Hama beads and this Cocktails project which I have blogged about previously. If we get any nice weather the cocktails go down really well!
If you use any of the ideas we would love to hear about it, tweet us @numberloving.
by Sharon Derbyshire | May 24, 2012 | Events, Teaching Ideas & Tools |
Next weekend marks the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and gives us an opportunity in class for some royal fun (!) I will be using these top trumps cards as a starter which feature familiar faces from the royal family and sums relating to the number 60.
I will then be getting my class to try this mystery “Can Will and Kate make it on time?”.
As a plenary I’ll be posing the question ‘how many ways can we make 60’ and students will share their examples on the window (see below). They will have to use the numbers between 1 and 10 and any operations they can think of, the most imaginative solution will win a suitably British prize! If you use any of these resources why not let us know how it goes @numberloving.
For some other great jubilee themed resources check out this collection on the TES…
Get in touch @numberloving and check out our free and premium resources in our
NumberLoving Store.
