1. Welcome and Feedback
2. The Emotional Barometer
3. Gym Locker Key Problem: win a prize!
4. Website of the month
5. Christmas Offer
1.
Yuletide
Felicitations!
Dear Maths
Friends- welcome, and Merry Christmas (when it finally
comes).
Remember
that thanks to the generosity of HP Calculators, subscription will remain free,
and there will be occasional offers made ONLY to subscribers. (see items 3 and 5). Last issue, I mentioned someone had told
me about a lovely idea using 5 fingers, but that I couldn’t remember who!
Luckily he read it, got in touch, and I am very happy to be able to tell you
that his name is Richard Ballinger. I promised I would mention his website
which is www.richard-ballinger.co.uk.
I am also
indebted this month to Malcolm Bellamy, a maths consultant from Southend, who emailed to say that he loved the maths
assembly idea from last month’s newsletter, and also something I wrote some
time ago about teaching children about adding and subtracting negative numbers.
I don’t
think the latter has ever been published in the newsletter, so I have included
it as item 2 this month. Thanks for your kind words, Malcolm!
Finally,
don’t miss my Christmas gift to you all. I was hoping to have finished my
calculator book, which will be sold on the website but will be given out free
to all of you. However due to a very busy term it is
not yet finished, so instead there is another special offer at the end.
Have a
great, happy and meaningful Christmas. See you all in the New Year, when I will
be revealing details of my Marathon attempt.
(For those
who can’t wait, there is more info here. It
currently stands at the princely sum of, err, £0.00!)
Be Well,
Andrew
2. The
Emotional Barometer
So my
thanks again to Malcolm Bellamy, who reminded me of an idea I posted some time ago
on the TES Maths forum, and for which he is this month’s winner of an HP
calculator.
“Hi Andrew,
I just thought I’d write to say thank you
for two of your ideas. I am teaching a Year 7 “Nurture” group on Monday (there
are 14 children in the group whose N/C levels range from 2A to 4C). They are
doing positive and negative numbers and I came across your idea for the
“emotions barometer” in a TES Forum.
I think this is an excellent idea for
getting children to relate mathematics to their feelings and get a real “feel”
for how the numberline (barometer) works. It will
hopefully allow them to explore their ideas about what is happening and “own”
the concept of positive and negative numbers.
I also liked your assembly idea in your
latest newsletter and will be bringing it to the attention of our Maths Subject
Leaders (both religious and non-religious versions) at a forthcoming Subject
leaders Meeting that we have.”
If you
missed the assembly from last month’s newsletter, here it
is.
My
emotional baromoter can be found here. It’s post 9, but there are also some really good suggestions
from a range of teachers – worth a read if you are looking for inspiration for
teaching about negative numbers.
3. The
Gym Locker Key Problem
For those
of us who will eat and drink too much in the coming weeks, we may wish to get down
the gym and work it off! Here is a true story that happened to me in a gym
recently in Lancashire, and which put me in mind of a great
‘what-can-we-do-for-the-end-of-term-fun-investigation’ idea.
Basically,
I was given locker key 66 and spent ages searching fruitlessly before realizing
that I was actually holding the key for locker 99! See the Blog for more details, but for now
here is the idea:
How many
numbers are different numbers when viewed upside down?
Of course,
we need to make certain assumptions, such as that 5 and 2 are rotations, as are
3 and 6, while 0, 1 and 8 are the same both ways up. Given that, and assuming
there are 100 lockers in the gym, how many ambiguous locker keys are there?
And how
many keys up to, say, 1000, would be the same number even if they are upside
down?
An
interesting problem, especially if you preface it with the true story of the
silly man you know who went to a gym and spent ages looking for a locker that
didn’t exist! (Which is true!)
As ever,
let me know how you get on with this. And as it is Christmas, I am offering a
prize to the best pupil entry. A free signed copy of Magic For
Kids, worth £10! So, set the problem, let your class get to work on the problem,
and post your answers to me at Magic Message, 61 Westfield Avenue North,
Saltdean, Brighton BN2 8HS to arrive BEFORE 20th December. I will contact the
winner on 20th and post the book signed with the winner’s name, so
with a bit of luck it might even arrive before Christmas.
Results
will be announced in January’s newsletter.
4.
Website of the Month
I’ve never done this before, but due to the surprising NIL response to last month’s website recommendation, I’m going to repeat last month’s fabulous website: here it is again! www.kenken.com is absolutely brilliant, and a much better use of your (and your pupils’) time than Sudoku! I was surprised that not even one person got in touch about this – maybe I didn’t plug it heavily enough (I’m not on commission, honest, I just think it has huge potential and it’s 100% free!).
Give it a try, even if you just start with a 4 x 4 grid…
5. A
Christmas Offer
For my birthday
in July, I offered a free copy of Top Twenty Maths Displays to anyone who
ordered 100 Top Tips. This proved very popular, and I thought if it was good
enough for my birthday, it was good enough for Jesus’ birthday, hence the offer
is repeated until Midnight on December 31st. I wrongly assumed that
it would be easy to add a comment on Paypal, but I
have since discovered that it isn’t, so if you do want to take advantage of
this offer, simply
send me an email as soon as you have bought 100 Top Tips saying
that you are a newsletter subscriber claiming the offer. I will then make sure
that you get both books. If you order by post it is more straightforward – just
include the fact that you are a subscriber on the order form. (If you don’t
send the email, you will only get one book, so please make sure you claim what
is your entitlement.
This offer
is not open to anyone else – only to you folks as a thank-you for being loyal
subscribers. Please don’t tell others about the offer (unless you are
encouraging them to sign up of course!)
Remember,
the calculator book will be published in the New Year and ONLY subscribers will
receive a free copy; everyone else will pay.
That’s it
for this month – have a great end of term and a peaceful (yeah, right!) break.
Have a happy and meaningful Christmas.
Thanks yet
again for being a subscriber, and remember, if you
enjoy the newsletter, please encourage others to sign up at http://andrewjeffrey.co.uk/newsletter.asp
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