This section provides links to resources and sources of inspiration to support the planning, learning, teaching and assessment specifially for upper primary, secondary and senior phase mathematics.
There are a number of posts and pages on this site which are not sector specific and are useful for all teachers of numeracy and maths. However, some websites links and resources shared in this section have a specific focus of supporting the secondary and senior phase maths curriculum.
This link takes you to the landing page for the overview of SQA mathematics courses and associated resources.
Jo Morgan’s resourceaholic blog has been developed to capture the best resources being shared across the internet and Twitter. Some fantastic links and her Gems section is highly recommended. A great site for teachers of secondary mathematics.
Craig Barton has collected and collated a wide range of resources, activities, research and weblinks to support teaching and learning of secondary mathematics. A fantastic source of inspiration across a range of topics.
Maths Planning Padlet – Miss Radders
Hannah Radders is a Head of Department in England and has collated a range of teaching resources, assessment materials, manipulatives, CPD and research into her planning Padlet for her maths department. A great go to when planning learning and teaching in secondary maths.
The Starting Points Maths blog is developed by Chris McGrane who is a PT Mathematics in Glasgow. The site contains tasks, activities, blog posts and signposting to research in relation to teaching and learning in mathematics. A great site and definitely worth a visit.
Chris McGrane and Siobhan McKenna have been creating Curriculum Booklets covering topics across Third Level but also straddles Second and Fourth Level within some topics. They have kindly shared these booklets via the Starting Points Blog. The booklets can be downloaded for free from here:
Here you will find a collection of free resources to support rich problem-solving activities in secondary school maths, including classroom material, assessment tasks and professional development resources. The material is aimed at S1 and S2, but can be adapted for a wide range of ages and abilities.
DrFrostMaths provides an online learning platform, teaching resources, videos and a bank of exam questions, all for free.
“Quite simply, his lessons and activities are brilliant. They are clearly laid out, contain examples, notes, questions and answers, and cover pretty much everything from key stage 3 right up to further maths A-level. They are all PowerPoint presentations or Word documents, so can be adapted, edited and merged with your existing lessons. Our students and teachers are currently Dr Frost mad!”
Craig Barton, Head of TES Maths Panel
The national5maths.com website provides a range of resources, questions, revision and homework material for S1, S2, S3 and National Courses. The site is particularly useful to students preparing for National Examinations as theses areas provide access to Past Paper resources and marking schemes.
Improving Learning in Mathematics – Standards Unit
The ‘Standards Unit’ contains some of the best resources that I have used in the classroom to deepen understanding across a range of topics. The resources were developed from the work of Susan Wall, a Gatsby fellow working at Wilberforce College, Hull and Dr Malcolm Swan from Nottingham University. The underlying principles to Malcolm’s and Susan’s approaches are identical, and built on research evidence of the last 30-40 years, which suggests that learning mathematics is far more successful if learners are actively engaged, encouraged to think mathematically and to see links and connections.
From the NCETM website:
“This multi-media resource has been developed with teachers, trainers and managers. Improving Learning in Mathematics builds on existing successful practice and explores approaches that encourage a more active way of learning through the use of group work, discussion and open questioning. Learners are encouraged to ‘have a go’, become more independent and reflective about their mathematics, to learn to think mathematically rather than simply learning rules and most importantly, to enjoy their mathematics.”
Desmos – www.desmos.com
This free suite of maths software tools, including the renowned Desmos Graphing Calculator and Scientific Calculator, are used annually by over 40 million teachers and students around the world.
The following blog has a range of pre-created Desmos graphs to support key teaching points in maths at National 5 and Higher. Worth checking out. National 5 and Higher Desmos Resources
NCETM Secondary Professional Development Resources
These materials therefore offer a ‘fine-grained’ description of the key themes and big ideas of the maths curriculum by detailing:
- six broad mathematical themes
- a number of core concepts within each theme
- a set of ‘knowledge, skills and understanding’ statements within each core concept
- a collection of focused key ideas within each statement of knowledge, skills and understanding.
These materials offer examples of questions, tasks and activities mapped against the key mathematical skills and concepts within the Third and Fourth Level numeracy and mathematics. They may support both teaching and assessment. The activities offered are not intended to address every single statement in the curriculum. Rather, they attempt to highlight the key themes and big ideas.
The median blog provides a vast range of high quality materials to support learning, teaching and assessment in maths. Don Stewart was a highly regarded maths educator and his tasks are some of the best written mathematical tasks designed to develop learners mathematical thinking.
This site has been developed to support anyone studying National 5 or Higher Mathematics. Use the drop-downs to find practice papers, video tutorials, and details of live online tutorials. More videos are added all the time so check back regularly for updates. All videos were created by a practising teacher who is currently Head of Mathematics at a school in Scotland and who has been teaching Mathematics at all levels since 2006. As an experienced SQA marker and author of several popular Maths textbooks, you can be sure that the content on this site is as accurate and comprehensive as is practicably possible.
This site has been created by a Scottish secondary maths teacher Mr Lafferty to share his resources across the secondary maths curriculum.
The name “Open Middle” might sound like a strange name for a website about maths problems. However, it references a very specific type of problem that are encouraged here. Most of the problems on this site have:
- a “closed beginning” meaning that they all start with the same initial problem.
- a “closed end” meaning that they all end with the same answer.
- an “open middle” meaning that there are multiple ways to approach and ultimately solve the problem.
Open middle problems generally require a higher Depth of Knowledge than most problems that assess procedural and conceptual understanding and they provide students with opportunities for discussing their thinking.
