5-a-side.

A number of a days, weeks or months (I forget, as everything recently has turned in to one big mess) I came across the Corbett Maths '5-a-day' resource on the Corbett Maths web site. A fantastic idea, but something that I wanted in a more 'usable' format in mixed ability forms so that our students are getting a diet of 'little and often'.

I threw something together (linked to Brazil 2014) and tweeted them, but wasn't entirely happy. Since deleting them, I've thought long and hard about how I want them to work and come up with... '5-a-side' (a proper rip off of '5-a-day', sorry) but the questions are taken from (or heavily inspired by) the 1 or 2 mark questions from the first ten questions of AQA papers from 2009 and 2010. The 'First 5' section comes from the first 10 questions of the foundation papers and 'Last 5' from the first 10 questions of the higher paper.

Rather simply, display it on the board through registration and allow students to work through at their own pace. I intend to e-mail answers out to form tutors that can be easily displayed too.

Here are two others that I've currently got through:

Any feedback gratefully received...

The Chase... Competitive times tables activity!

Every day, 5pm, ITV1.

I watch The Chase on a daily basis whilst I eat with my partner. I don't think the format lends itself well to the classroom on the whole, but I think 'The Final Chase' does.

So...
Pick a child, any child. I'll be picking mine using a random name generator.
The child is to pick four pupils to chase - they're likely to choose their friends, as I don't think they've got the tactics to pick the lower ability kids in the group.
The four pupils who they've chosen to chase are given a minute to answer as many multiplication problems as possible - when a question is asked, only the person who is asked to answer may answer (wrong person answers, whether correct or not, are not accepted).
The chaser then has their minute to answer as many multiplication problems as possible, aiming to beat the target set by the four pupils they chose to chase.
Pupil scores are noted in the league table and the winners are to be celebrated at the end of the year.

The league table is to be scored on number of multiplication problems answered, and any ties decided by the difference between their score and the score they chased.

Potential alterations:
Make the original chase the whole class, one question each. Chaser chases the score set by the rest of the class.
Extend to other topics - fractions of an amount, percentages, and others.

I've made a SMART Notebook file for use, downloadable from here.

Numbers Game! Countdown Math & Numeracy in Form Time

I have a game called 'Numbers Game! Countdown Math' on my phone and haven't played it an awful lot lately. My Year 10 Numeracy Leaders are in forms at the moment and want to do 'Countdown'-type activities.

I sat down to make some of these up earlier and I don't like doing it... I tend to stick to certain numbers and make them too easy/too hard. I then thought of the game and downloaded it to my tablet to start again at level 1, noting down the numbers and targets. My other option was to rewatch '8 out of 10 cats does Countdown' for some easy ones, but there's football on!

So... I now have approximately 90 sets of numbers to go off, split into 1-20, 21-40, etc. where each interval will represent a 'level'.

1, 21, 41, 61 and 81 are as follows:

They give space on the IWB for someone to write their solution on, just like on the show and I'm intending to do another five of these every week for use by my Numeracy Leaders.


(02, 22, 42, 62, 82):

(03, 23, 43, 63, 83):

(04, 24, 44, 64, 84):

(05, 25, 45, 65, 85):

(06, 26, 46, 66, 86):

The Hunger Games... An adaptation of The Pirate Game

Sooner than I thought!

Here it is... The Hunger Games! Designed for use at Easter, because of the link between 'Hunger' and 'Lent' (tenuous, I know...), you can download the resources from the TES web site.

The Reindeer Game... The Christmas alternative to The Pirate Game

At the end of last year I did what everybody else seemed to be doing and played 'The Pirate Game' shared by @mrprcollins. I had a great time. Every session exhausted me as the facilitator but all the kids had a great time and so did I!

I had penciled in The Pirate Game for every end of term lesson with every class, but I then thought 'What do I do about Easter and Summer?'. I'd like to do The Pirate Game at Summer, so needed some options.

Meet 'The Reindeer Game'... because 'they never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games...'.

Download 'The Reindeer Game' from The TES web site.

There'll be one for Easter coming soon... with a twist.