Sunday 3 July 2016

Increasingly Difficult Questions

Last week at MathsConf7 at the Royal Armouries in Leeds, I went to my final session about teaching for depth with the West Yorkshire Maths Hub.

I'd had the training before and as a result, at that time, I tried to start a notice board in our staff workroom called 'If this is question 1, what is question...?'. The intention was that staff would add question 2 with a logical increase in difficulty, and another member of the staff would add question 3, and so on... It didn't exactly take off, which was frustrating, so I ditched it.

I then had a conversation on the day with a lady at my table in the session which went similar to:
Me: "So, if we're all aware of these exercises, why has no-one released a text book with a load in?"
Her: "Collins are on the way to doing some, and have some primary ones, but the secondary ones are due soon."
Me: "I'm not even talking about a textbook, to be fair. Just, like CorbettMaths.com, why has no-one done some exercises and put them online?"

It was then that I realised that I was being a little selfish. Why aren't they out there? Why can't I use them? I want them, and they're not there... Maybe I could make them, maybe I could share them, and maybe I could add a bit to other's classrooms, just like others offer a lot to mine.

Me: "I'm very aware, now, that I could've done it, and I'm aware that I haven't. Just, how come someone hasn't?"

So, here goes...

Introducing 'Increasingly Difficult Questions' @ taylorda01.weebly.com.

Over the next 5 hours, a tweet will go from my account every 20 minutes highlighting a different exercise that I've added to the page. Most are 'Number'-based, but a small handful of others are available. In the future, I will tweet whenever new content is added.

In the future, I'm hoping to open this up to submissions, but I'm a bit of a stickler for fonts, layouts and sizing, and as a result, I'm not sure how to go about this. Any feedback on the resources, or ideas about how this can go forward, are gratefully received.

Dave