Andrew Jeffrey's August 2007 Newsletter

Dear Maths Friends, I hope you are having a well-deserved rest, and are now fully refreshed and ready for the new year. This is the biggest issue of the Maths Newsletter to date, and I hope that there will be something for everyone. Enjoy!

1. Reaction to the June Issue

6. Another Magic Maths Trick

2. Maths in the News

7. SATIPS Maths Conference 2007

3. Flyers Have Been Sent

8. TES Magazine

4. Top Tip: Capacity

9. Two Special Offers!

5. Mathematical Podcasts

10. September and October are full!

1. Reaction to the June issue, done in this new more interesting format, was gratifying, so I am sticking with it for now. This issue is the biggest and hopefully best yet. Again, thank you all so much for being a member of this email list. At the last count there were 473 of you, so you are clearly a discerning bunch! Just to prove that you are actually reading it, here is some feedback received:

"Big improvement, it is a lot more pleasing to the eye" - Gary

So we're sticking with it for now!

"Why don't you put the flyer on your site or with the newsletter so that we can download our own?" - Linda

(Great idea; I have it on my to-do list for September!)

"I tried the magic maths trick with my Year 6 class: they loved it!" - Isobel

Thanks Isobel; see a new trick later in this issue!

Thanks for the newsletter, Andrew. Did you notice that today at 12:34 it was 1234567? - Emile

(No I didn't! Great spot; thanks Emile.)

"Those were my links!" -Peter

True, apologies for not crediting you with those great Lehrer links, Peter!

http:www.andrewjeffrey.co.uk

2. Maths in the news: It was interesting to see the DfES announce recently that they were piloting a scheme to offer on-to-one tuition in 484 schools to help children catch up with their peers in maths. Here's what The Times had to say about it. I noticed that the same Times page also had a link to interactive Sudoku...neat.

TheTimes Article

3. New Flyers: AT LAST you have them. Following a helpful suggestion from a subscriber, I am looking into putting a copy of the flyer on the website to see if this proves useful to people. My concern is that doing it this way, folk have nothing to physically hold, but at least they could get the information quickly, which seems to be so important these days. Also, hundreds of second class stamps quickly becomes expensive, so this allows me to reach more people with the Magic Message...if anyone else wants a copy, just send me you school address and I'll post one out.

http:www.andrewjeffrey.co.uk

4. Top Tip: Creative Capacity. Do you ever get fed up with all the plastic water bottles children seem to carry round and leave in your classroom these days? I combined the need to do something with them with the need to make my teaching of capacity more interesting, challenging and practical, and came up with this. I have tried it and it was a hit. You need to go outside with an empty 500ml bottle and a 330ml bottle per small group (about 3 or 4 children), and a big bucket/vat of water. The challenge you set is for each group to show you a bottle containing exactly 170ml of water. Ground rules are that they may fill their bottles from the big bucket and pour any water back in there that they do not require; no wasting or spraying it around, obviously! I find that a threat of going back inside is sufficient to prevent incidents. They may not guess - the correct way is to fill the larger bottle, then pour from it into the smaller bottle until the smaller one is full. There will now be 170ml in the larger bottle!

As an extension activity, next tell them that they need to show you a bottle with exactly 160ml in it. This is harder; some will be tempted just to pour away a little; tell them that if they had a teaspoon they could just fill it twice from the 170 ml (5ml per teaspoon) but alas they are not allowed to do this. The solution this time is to fill the smaller bottle, transfer it to the bigger bottle, then repeat. At some point the larger bottle will become full - at this point, there is exactly 160ml in the smaller bottle. I found that the classes in Years 5 and 6 with whom I trialled this developed a far more thorough understanding of capacity than they had had previously, and they had lots of fun. I suspect this would be effective in Years 7 and 8 too. Give it a try! It's idea for a Maths Problem Solving day, too!

5. Mathematical Podcasts: Followers of my blog will know that I recently received an iPod without the necessary skills to go with it. Followig a visit to my friend Stephen in London, I now know about Podcasts�to those of you as thick as me, these are audio recordings that can be downloaded onto MP3 players. I have found a couple worthy of mention here: my favourite is Dan's mathcast, but there are many others, one of which provides this month's puzzle, with which Stephen tortured me for over an hour! Just fire up iTunes, type 'maths podcast' into your favourite search engine and I promise you will not be disappointed!

6. Magic Maths: The reaction to last month's trick was astounding! An encouraging number of you (well 3 or 4) contacted me and said that you had amazed your students with the calculator division trick. So here's another fun thing to try: Get hold of three dice and ask your victim to stack them in a pile while your back is turned. Ask them to add up five numbers; the five hidden faces, ie. the bottom, and the four faces that are touching another die. Turn round and correctly reveal to them what the total of these five numbers is. To do so, just subtract the number on the very top from 21. This is because the top and bottom of a die always add up to 7, so three dice make 21 in total. Very neat! (Of course, being a worker of miracles, you will not just 'tell them the total': make it a performance by pretending to struggle!)

7. The SATIPS Maths Conference, 2007: I am delighted to announce that this is taking place on November 20th at Newton prep School, Hammersmith. I will be delivering the opening session, which is a brand new lecture immodestly entitled 'Outstanding Maths Lessons'. (Well, at least I have watched a few!) I look forward to seeing you there - put in in your diary now!

8. I got a call from the TES recently. They are looking for slightly mad teachers, I think, and wanted to do an article on me. This is to do with the fact that I use magic - I am trying to get away from this image of the slightly quirky maths teacher, but I am told that no publicity is bad publicity, so watch the TES carfefully over the next few weeks!

9: 2 Special Offers: If any school books a day and persuades a nearby school to book an adjacent day, BOTH schools will receive a 10% discount. (I am hoping that this 10% discount for back-to-back days will become a permanent offer.) Also, for readers of this newsletter, I am reducing the price of the downloads and CDs of my 40 motivational quotes. entitled 'I Wish I'd Said That!' by 50%, for August and September only. This means that the price for the pdf is only �7.50, and the CD is only �10. The cost of the laminated sets is also reduced to �30, a saving of �10. PLease not that this offer is ONLY for subscribers to this newsletter. When paying, simply mention this offer and I will honour the discount. Visit http://andrewjeffrey.co.uk/products.asp to see the package.

10 September and October are full! Thank you to all who have made bookings for September and October. Unfortunately I am not in a position to accept any more work during these two months, but there is still space from November onwards. I hope to hear from you soon if you would like to experience the Magic of Maths for yourself!

Until Next Time,

Andrew

http:www.andrewjeffrey.co.uk

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