@over-drawn.bsky.social
200 followers 310 following 290 posts
Maths teacher secondary, A level, FM. Fan of mechanics and supporting pupils with additional university exams. Former professional singer. Profile pic was a favourite gift this year (and says a lot about my sense of humour).
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over-drawn.bsky.social
Love this. I'm still playing around with whether to demonstrate/encourage MoDs by changing the limits on the sums i.e. \sum_{r=1}^n (r^2) - \sum_{r=1}^n(r+1)^2 becomes ... - \sum_{r=2}^{n+1}(r^2)

It seems like a great idea, but do I lose a load of pupils along the way?
over-drawn.bsky.social
#mathstoday #alevelmaths Gave a reasonably challenging problem to my A level class today, namely (3^6-1)/(3^5+3^4+...+1) as a "starter", although I'm not so keen on the term. It provoked quite a bit of conversation and, although not my intention, led us down GPs before factorising. Lots of fun.
Reposted
mathforge.org
A little follow-up to my post yesterday about integrating ln(x).

loopspace.mathforge.org/CountingOnMy...

#UKMathsChat #ALevelMaths #ITeachMaths
ThAt oNe wEirD tRicK
loopspace.mathforge.org
over-drawn.bsky.social
I don't know how I missed this back in February, but it's excellent. Love the graphs, in particular.
over-drawn.bsky.social
These are great. Thanks for sharing. There's often a disconnect between simultaneous equations and how the solution can be represented on a graph.

If you're yet to place them in front of your pupils, there's a small typo in the bottom left equation of slide 1.
over-drawn.bsky.social
I think Ben Sparks did some Excel and Geogebra instructional videos using the LDS (although I might have made that bit up). He's done some amazing stuff that's worth exploring if you get a chance.
over-drawn.bsky.social
I love it. It immediately makes me wonder why I've never seen this idea before.
over-drawn.bsky.social
I'm pretty sure that woolly jumper is the punchline to a different "cross" joke...
over-drawn.bsky.social
#mathstoday I may have derived the Gauss Shoelace Formula with my year 10s. Spot the name of my OneNote page 🫣
over-drawn.bsky.social
I should add that my HoD is planning to change all this but is on maternity leave. Her cover is, understandably, reluctant to make any significant changes in her absence, which I think is the right thing to do.
over-drawn.bsky.social
Indeed. I feel somewhat forced into mine very own SoW. Fortunately, the kids buy in and we will revisit all these things later too (regular cohort testing does limit what I can realistically get done). I'm hoping that, as we dip in and out of these topics, some of the maths comes together for them.
over-drawn.bsky.social
#mathstoday Our SoW puts similar triangles after right-angled trig, and volume and SA before both. Being the bloody-minded individual I am, I may have already introduced some trig and, today, had fun finding the volume of a frustum using all of the above. Lots of "Ohhhh" moments.
over-drawn.bsky.social
Assume everything is complex and then all your options are covered.

Also, it's exhausting.
over-drawn.bsky.social
Even sgn on its own is quite an unusual graph to examine. It's also no bad thing to see something that looks horrendous and then slowly unpick it. It reduces that sense of being overwhelmed, and gives confidence to look at other things. With time, they may even be able to read maths on wikipedia 😂
over-drawn.bsky.social
But produces some great M4 (I think) questions 🫣
over-drawn.bsky.social
Surely, the rate of change of momentum 😂
over-drawn.bsky.social
Context is the determining factor here. How you draw your diagram will affect the answer. In short, there's no hard and fast rule except that it's the angle you turn through to get from the initial line of motion to the final.
over-drawn.bsky.social
Inspiration! Love it. Thanks for sharing.
over-drawn.bsky.social
I use the "ac" method for helping pupils work out why the Particular Integral needs/has an x in front of it, if the f(x) already exists in the CF. Good for all years
Explaining it to my GCSE groups (quadratics rather than 2nd order ODEs) is not always successful.
I often use (ax)^2+b(ax)+ac instead.
over-drawn.bsky.social
Excellent. Next, differentiating x^2 using the product rule. 🫣

This is definitely the sort of fun that I might inflict on my groups. Love it.
over-drawn.bsky.social
Future projects include dragons? 🤣
Dragon curve fractal
over-drawn.bsky.social
#mathstoday Absolutely loved working through some Madas discriminant problems with my FM group. So much discussion about problem solving, layout of algebra, graph sketching. And a thunderstorm to distract us in the middle. Being a maths teacher is great!
Reposted
cxmetcalfe.bsky.social
New academic year, new Step Support Programme website!

Over the summer we have updated our website, had a bit of a tidy up, and added some new content.

One of the new features is a "Check in test' for students who have completed the foundation modules complete with marksheme.

maths.org/step/
Home | STEP Support Programme
maths.org