Bronagh McKeown – Mathematics Teacher
On Saturday 14th September four members of the maths department attended ‘The Mathematical Association Secondary Education Mathematics Conference’ held in Stirling University (www.m-a.org.uk). The day consisted of a keynote address by Peter Ransom and then the opportunity to visit four different workshops of our own choice. Below is a summary of the workshops I attended:
Workshop 1
This workshop was entitled ‘A Square Meal’ by Adam McBride and it was both informative and entertaining (bonus!). The focus was on investigating Magic Squares (a square in which every row, column and diagonal have the same total). He showed lots of cool tricks that can be investigated by pupils and the algebra behind it all which could be investigated and discussed with high ability pupils. I found it very interesting and hope to be able to find a way to incorporate some of it into my lessons.
Workshop 2
This workshop was presented by Monica Kirson where she shared some resources she has developed and used with her pupils. Highlights included:
- Investigating misleading statistics (a new part of Statistics with CfE) and how pupils can go about making and presenting their own.
- An activity to make investigating properties of quadrilaterals more interesting where pupils in effect teach each other!
- Question/ Answer cards that can be used in a variety of ways with a variety of topics.
Most of these resources will kindly be made available to us.
Workshop 3
This workshop was presented by Clive Chambers and was entitled ‘A potpourri of gems, small and large’. Clive highlighted a few different problem more aimed towards university level maths, some of which were quite challenging for those attending the workshop (I’m blaming the fact it was a Saturday!) He did however inform us of a website that has more practice questions for Higher and Advanced Higher, www.higherandadvancedhighermathematics.co.uk which should definitely benefit the pupils in the department.
Workshop 4
At this workshop Rachel Horsman showed off some of her resources that can help keep pupils actively involved in their learning. One of the great ones is Padlock Maths, pupils have to solve a series of problems, on a given topic and each section provides part of the code to open the padlock and win the contents of the box (pens, pencils, sweets). Rachel has produced a book of these resources which we have now purchased and plan to use with some classes to motivate and encourage pupils.
In conclusion a good day was had by all and we have picked up some new ideas and resources to incorporate into our teaching in the near future.
