Andrew Jeffrey's October 2008
Newsletter
IMPORTANT: (Do NOT click ‘reply’ as I
will never get to see your email)
Instead, please
send all emails to info@andrewjeffrey.co.uk
1. Welcome and feedback
2. Website of the Month
3. SATIPS Maths Conference –
exciting news
4. Maths in the News
5. Classroom Idea to
encourage logical thinking
6. Book Review
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1. Welcome and Feedback
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Dear
Friends,
I hope that
your term has started well. As I mentioned last month I have spent much of my
time this month writing; the initial text is mostly written, but there is still
loads to get through. Watch this space. Not much feedback from last month’s
newsletter, as I suspect that most people have been too busy getting the new
school year up and running! I did receive the following very nice email about Maths Day In A Box,
which the school actually used on the very day I was visiting! (It was surreal
to see the children’s work and watch them take part in the relay!)
“Your MDIAB was an invaluable resource. I was very
impressed and it was worth every penny. It took all the hard work out of
planning the day and I would recommend it to anyone. Please feel free to give
my name as a reference.”
Thank you to
Amanda Gray of Richmond Avenue Primary school, Southend.
Consider your name ‘given’!
So, this
month’s newsletter gets straight to it - hopefully as usual there will be
something for everyone. And it’s still free! Note that Einstein and friends
take a break this month, but rest assured that there will be another
challenging quote next month.
Please
remember that since this newsletter is
sent out automatically, hitting ‘reply’ will not work – your reply will not reach
me. I can always get emails sent to info@andrewjeffrey.co.uk
; please add this address to
your address book.
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2. Maths Website of the Month.
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Recently,
the BBC has published a series of thought-provoking articles on its website
(the best website in the world bar none imo!) about
mathematics in the real world.
They are
well-written, amusing and informative, and make fascinating reading. Recent
ones have covered such topics as percentages, averages, etc. Here is the link
to one of my favourites, from where you can jump to
the other articles. Check it out here.
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3. SATIPS MATHS CONFERENCE: 12th November
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Those of you
whom I have met through the SATIPS Charity will know that once a year I
co-organise the London Maths Conference for teachers in independent schools.
This year it
is to be held at Feltonfleet school, Cobham, and we have what is very possibly the strongest
line-up of guest-speakers we have ever had; I am thrilled to announce that the man
of the moment, Sir Peter Williams CBE, will open the conference. He will be
talking about the big shake-up of primary mathematics that the Williams Review has
recently recommended and that the government has now agreed to adopt.
As if that
wasn’t exciting enough, I am delighted to announce that Professor Peter Tymms, assessment expert and the man who created the PIPS
system will also be giving an address during the morning.
In the
afternoon there will be workshops given by Serena Alexander, Cambridge-Hitachi,
and myself. For more details, contact SATIPS, or drop me an email. This course
is oversubscribed every year, and I suspect that this year will be no exception,
so get in quick – it is first-come, first served.
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4. Maths in the News
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You may have
seen in the news recently the story that the world’s largest known Mersenne prime number has recently been discovered; the
first one to have over 10 million digits. To be precise, it has 12,978,189
digits, and if you were to write it down it would be over 30 miles long; now there’s a cool statistic to quote next
time you are teaching about prime numbers! There is more to the story than
that; amazingly, two Mersenne primes were discovered
within weeks of each other. (Mersenne primes are
prime numbers which are one less than a prime power of 2!)
You can read
the full story HERE.
Also making
news this month has been the debate over homework, with the UK’s largest school
scrapping it altogether. Personally I have always been in favour of a bit of homework, if only because it has the
capacity to engage parents with their children’s work, and that can only be a
good thing. What do you think?
Homework: pain in the neck, or genuine benefit?
Finally in
this section, most of us have fixed ideas about the rights or wrongs of setting
children for mathematics, but some research that my wife spotted written up in
The Times recently may shed some interesting light on the debate. (The comments that people have posted after
it make very interesting reading!)
I want to
know what you think; do you think that setting benefits pupils as a whole, or
just some? And if you are in favour of setting, at
what age should it start? Should there be a G+T set, a support set, and
everyone else be mixed, for example? I look forward to hearing your views.
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5. Classroom Idea for
Encouraging Logical Thinking
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Some things
are so old, they’re new. For example, I recently rediscovered a classic type of
problem and have been using it with a very bright KS3 child to encourage him to
think logically about his mathematics. If you haven’t used these for a while,
or even if you have never tried them, do give them a go.
Basically,
you are faced with people who either always tell the truth or always lie – sound familiar? The people make statements and you
have to reason carefully to work out whether each is telling the truth or
lying. I had forgotten how much fun these could be, and having a good stock of
them would be a useful addition to any teacher’s arsenal. And of course, logic
is the playground of mathematicians!
Here are a
few examples to get you started. See if you can tell which family (true or
false speakers) each person belongs to in each of the following examples.
Eg 1.
Person A: “I belong to the family
that always tells the truth”.
Person B: “I belong to the same
family as person A”.
Eg 2.
Person A: “We are from different families.”
Person B: “A is lying.”
Eg 3.
Person A: I always tell the truth.”
Person B: “A always lies.”
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6. Book Review: ‘50 Mathematical Ideas you
really need to know’ by Tony Crilly
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I bought
this book as part of my research for my own forthcoming book (see September’s
newsletter for details). I have been really impressed by it; a very concise but
easy-to-read volume, containing the 50 most crucial (in the author’s opinion)
pieces of mathematics you need to know. Refreshingly, although much of the
subject matter is quite serious, Mr Crilly has gone to great lengths to make it understandable.
Topics as broad as Infinity, Fractals, Game Theory and Matrices are all covered
in an intelligent but clear way.
My recent
book reviews have been more focused on the primary age range, but this is
definitely focused on secondary pupils or teachers. It would make a great
prize, for example.
ISBN:
978-1-84724-008-8
Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc
That’s it
for October. Next month I will tell you about some of the exciting things I
have lined up in the coming months!
Until Next
Time, AJ x
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