1.
Welcome and Feedback
2.
Website of the Month: World Maths Day
3.
Great Maths Teaching Ideas: Maths from Photos
4.
INSET and conferences
5.
Still Free, and news of great future prizes –
coming soon!
6.
Book Review
7.
Einstein Says…
Welcome to the March Newsletter
Dear Maths Friends- welcome! As you will know if you are reading
this, we are now emailing out a link rather than the whole newsletter, as every
month it appears that many never receive the newsletter for some reason, and
some of you receive two copies, so from this issue, I will continue to put the
newsletter on the website as before, but instead of sending it out to several
thousand of you, I will simply send out the link, allowing you to access it. This
in turn should help ensure that everyone gets it safely.
February was another busy month, and March has been almost as
mad, hence a much later newsletter than usual. My life-long dream to visit Rome
was finally fulfilled this month when I was invited to deliver some INSET to
teachers at a British International school in the city. I even took the whole
family – see the
blog
for further details. I also had a fabulous two day trip working in the Hague, another place I had never visited.
The edge was slightly
taken off this trip by a terrible plan crash at Amsterdam. See the blog for further details. One of my ideas for you this month was sparked
by my experiences in Europe; another was inspired by snow!
2. Website of the Month: World Maths Day 2009
I was going to include this particular site in February but
didn’t as I had assumed that everyone already knew about it, but apparently I
was wrong – apologies.
So, this month let’s put that right: the official site of World
Maths Day 2009: visit http://worldmathsday.com, and take
part in the games. You will need to register, and it’s too late to play
interactively this year, but why not take a look in readiness for next year? but it's completely free, and you can register an unlimited
number of students from 5 to 18 who can take part. You can practise as soon as
you have registered, but the scoring games normally go live on World Maths Day,
and run for the
whole day. There are even prizes to be won, and this is a must for any school
that is serious about getting children more involved with enjoying their maths.
Check it out: http://worldmathsday.com
3. Teaching Idea: Maths from Photos
What a wonderful sight the Coliseum was! It isn’t hard to
imagine this extraordinary building in its heyday. Being a bit of a maths nerd, I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was
possible to estimate out how many arches it would have had when first
constructed. Is it possible to work out from this picture? (If the link does not take you to the correct place, please try to find the
Blog entry dated 28th March 2009 entitled “March 2009 Photos”.)
If not, what other
information would be useful in order to work it out? What can you learn from
studying it? It is 545m around the outside, so how far across is it? How do you
know? Is it a circle or an ellipse? If it was turned into a swimming pool, how
much water would it hold? How could you work it out? What other questions could
you ask?
I hope these questions start you thinking of your own…
Secondly, there is an extraordinary picture I took using my
mobile phone during the February snow. If you look carefully you can see that
the entire sheet of snow covering the window has dropped and turned
anti-clockwise. Amazing! I reckon it would be an interesting one to use to help
children explore rotational symmetry, properties of polygons, etc. Can you
describe the transformation that would map the snow onto the window? How many
degrees has it turned? What is the area of the window? Etc.
I’m sure that other people have good photos that could be used
as starting points, especially with the ease of displaying them on IWBs these
days. If enough people send me some, I will put a few together into a free
e-book exclusively for newsletter subscribers. It’s up to you!
4. INSET and Conferences
I have seen a huge increase in the number of requests for Maths
INSET that has come in from Primary, Secondary schools, and from Conference
organizers looking for keynotes or workshops. I enjoy doing these, but due to
the time needed to make them as useful as possible, I can commit to a limited
number per annum. So – if you would like me to come and do something similar,
can I please ask for as much notice as possible? The earlier I get a request,
the longer I have to plan something really good and appropriate! So far in
March alone I have done a day conference for TAs at a chocolate factory in
Bath, a conference for OCR in a museum in Manchester, training days for BEAM
and NUMICON, and an appearance with the Magic of the Mind Show at The Big Bang fair in Westminster, the first of its kind in
the UK. Check it out here.
5. Still Free, and Prizes Coming Soon.
I have on more than one occasion promised that this newsletter
would remain free to subscribe to, and it now looks as though this will
continue to be the case thanks to a kind offer from a sponsor. From next month,
I can announce that I have entered into a sponsorship deal with HP Calculators.
Their generosity
will allow me to bring some valuable free gifts to training sessions and
schools. It will also help to ensure that this remains, as promised, a free
monthly resource available to all teachers.
Why not pass it on to a colleague and encourage them to sign up?
Next month I have a couple of fabulous ideas for you, including
one to do with fast-food maths to share with you, that I guarantee will have you
nipping down to your local MacDonalds!
6. Book Review: The Music of The
Primes
This month it is the turn of Marcus Du Sautoy’s
amazing ‘Music of The Primes’. Another Christmas present from the fab Mrs J, this is an unusual
review as I am still only halfway through the book but am so excited I had to
share it with you. To be honest, this is not a book that will appeal to the
layman unless they are pretty mathematically competent. It is a well-written
journey through the history of man’s fascination with prime numbers, and if it
were not for the fact that I have been run off my feet I would probably have
read it three times over. In fact, I have had to read some sections more than
once just to get my head round the brilliant thinking of such influential men
as Gauss and Reimann to name but two.
If you are not sure whether you would like this book, I’d say
give it a try; even though you may at times get lost in some of the mathematics
(I am particularly rubbish on Zeta functions, for example) you will still
appreciate the intoxicating fascination with primes that shines through
Marcus’s writing. I’ll let you know when I’ve finished it!
7. Einstein Says
The master returns with another quote, but this time it was
quoted to me by a lovely young girl in Chesham, who put up her hand during a
session I was giving and told me that Einstein had said “The person who has
never failed has never tried anything new.”
Excellent, and this is an important message for teachers and students
alike. If I have ever taught a good lesson, it is probably due in some measure
to something I learnt from having taught a bad one!