1.
Welcome and Feedback
2.
Brilliant Maths Assembly for those in Church schools
3.
The Raffle Tickets Compilation!
4.
Website of the month
5.
A nifty mental arithmetic idea
6.
Two Great Upcoming Conferences
1.
Welcome to the October Newsletter!
Dear Maths Friends- welcome, especially to those subscribers who
are joining us for the first time. Each month we are growing in number, as
although inevitably many people retire or move away, there are several new
names added to the list. One lady who
wrote to unsubscribe wrote the following:
“I thought you might like to know that I have
used some of your ideas over the years. The reason for unsubscribing is that I
have now retired from my job as a teaching assistant in the junior part of our
local primary school after 27 years. I have always enjoyed the maths element as
I love trying to get the kids to think of different strategies etc. and the
look on their faces when the penny dropped. Many thanks for all your help for
the past few years.”
Thank you for your kind words, Wendy, and enjoy your retirement.
Remember that thanks to the generosity of HP Calculators,
subscription will remain free, and there will be occasional offers made ONLY to
subscribers. A big thank you to those of you who attended the Launch Party last
month – it went very well, and was such a hit that many of our friends decided on
the night to hold a Christmas party at the venue! ‘Be A Wizard With Numbers’ is on the
shelves now, and I have already been contacted by another publisher with
details of a very exciting project. More details next time (once contracts have
been signed…)
Finally in this section, an apology. Last
month I sent out not a newsletter (time just ran out, I’m afraid) but instead
sent a newsflash advertising that there are still spaces on the satips maths conference. While doing so I accidentally hit
the wrong button and sent out the old December 2007 newsletter! A few people unsubscribed
in annoyance, which is fair enough – my fault entirely as I was away from the
office and using a touchpad rather than a mouse. I brushed against the wrong
button at the wrong moment, and boom, we all went back in time…sorry for the
inconvenience, and thanks to those who took the trouble to email, often
humorously, to tell me so!
On with the current crop ideas…
2. A Great
Maths Assembly for those in Church schools
Some of you will love this. It is a little-known piece of maths
that I am planning to include as a bonus activity for Church schools in my
forthcoming calculators book (details next year). The best thing would be to
make it into a PowerPoint presentation, but it is perfectly possible to do it
without. You will probably need a calculator unless your class
are very rapid adders!
Start by asking children if they know a formula for success. We
often hear about giving 100% effort, but what does that mean? And how come some
footballers are described as giving 110%? Or Simon Cowell
saying irritating things like “A million percent yes!”
Here’s a way to find the winning formula. Give every letter in
the alphabet a value, starting with a=1, b=2, etc.
Add up the letters of K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E. 96! So knowledge can
give us almost 100%!
Next try H-A-R-D W-O-R-K. Interestingly, it is 98. So
although knowledge is important, Working Hard is even better.
But there’s more. Work out how far A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E will take
you…100%!
And just when you thought that was it, check out the score for
the L-O-V-E O-F G-O-D.
You’ve guessed it: 101%!
In other words, we can conclude that:
While Hard Work and Knowledge will get you close, and
Attitude will get you there, it’s the Love of God that will put you over the
top!
Not everyone’s cup of tea, but for some schools this will work
really well. I was first shown this by Mike Gee from Aldrington
School in Hove, so my thanks to him. (In
some schools you might feel it inappropriate to use the final bit, but that
doesn’t stop you doing the other bits of course – it’s still a great assembly about
attitude!)
3. Raffle Tickets
Further to my thoughts on using raffle tickets to test Derren
Brown’s Lottery prediction in September’s
newsletter, I have decided to try an experiment. Lots of you use raffle
tickets to good effect in your work. I thought it might be interesting to
compile a booklet of ideas, as they are such a cheap and versatile resource. So
here’s my suggestion: send me your ideas for using raffle tickets in maths
lessons. I will collate them and add my own ideas, and then produce a book that
will be free to subscribers, significantly earlier than it goes onto my website
downloads page.
4. Website
of the Month
I have recently become a little bored of Sudoku (gasp). It isn’t that I don’t enjoy them, but I am always on the lookout for something new to stimulate the old grey matter. Help was at hand in the pages of Times, in the form of two great little daily puzzles you may well have heard of, which, unlike Sudoku, actually require you to do a bit more mathematics.
The first is The Workout – a delightful little puzzle, in which you are required to split a grid into rectangles, each containing just a single number which must be the area of the rectangle. I always start with prime numbers – why?
The second is called Kenken. This is a 6-by6-grid, and like any Latin Square the digits 1 to 6 must appear in every row and column, but this time the grid is divided into sections. Each section has a total and a +.-.x or ÷ sign. The numbers in that section must combine in the given way to make that total – brilliant and mathematically more satisfying than Sudoku.
With care, these puzzles could work very well in both Primary and Secondary, and what’s more, the children would be learning some maths while they were doing them!
Here is an example of The Workout from last year, and you can find out more about Kenken at http://www.kenken.com
5. A
Nifty Mental Arithmetic Idea
You need nerves of steel to try this – it won’t work on every
group, and probably will work better on girls than boys. Tell the most
trustworthy one you can find that you are going to put a prediction in their
hand. Remove your hand from your drawer/pocket/bag and ask them to open their
hand while you drop the prediction in, then ask close their fingers around it
and squeeze tightly. In reality you have not put anything in there at all, but
it is important that you mime the exact action, and act as though you really
believe there is something there.
Ask the class to think of a number…double…add 10…divide by
2...subtract their original number…
Now ask them to quickly and dramatically open their hand to show
the prediction. Of course there is nothing there, but the hand will be wide
open. Count the fingers sticking up – five – you knew the right
answer after all! Very cute, and given to me by a subscriber from the
West of England who is also a magician. I foolishly didn’t write down his name,
so if you are reading this, email me and I will be
sure to mention your name next time. You have also won an HP Calculator for
this super idea!
6. Two Great Upcoming Conferences
The Postal strike is playing havoc with small businesses like
mine and many others, and it may be that many people never received information
about the satips maths conference and the MA
conference, both coming up in London this month and both well worth attending. The
satips maths conference, (satips
is an education charity supporting teachers in independent schools) is THIS WEDNESDAY (4th
Nov) and there are still some
places left. This is almost always oversubscribed, so this year is perhaps
your best chance of obtaining a place. Also, as a not-for-profit charity, the
course is only £100 including lunch! It is being held at Hurlingham
School in Putney, and aimed at specialists and non-specialists. Always a great
day – book a place now!
The second course I can highly recommend is the Maths Association
Conference, to be held on 25th November at the Institute of
Education. Aimed at Primary teachers, there is a glittering array of speakers from
the education world. (And I know most of them personally, so that isn’t just
hype!) For details, click
here.
That’s it for this month – sorry October was so manic, but there
will be another newsletter in December.
Thanks for being a subscriber, and remember,
if you enjoy the newsletter, please encourage others to sign up at http://andrewjeffrey.co.uk/newsletter.asp
AJx
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