Circle Geometry Puzzle

Just a little bit of extra fun in Circle Geometry for my Extension 1 students.




I'd like to try more of this sort of thing, but it was hard work! Maybe the students should make their own as a homework assignment.

Day 21: Fraction Word Puzzle

One of the New Century books, the Year 7 Teacher Resource Pack, has a fraction puzzle where you take a specified fraction of each word and add those letters to the blanks to complete a riddle. I've used this sheet a lot and had lots of fun with it. So I made my own for Mathsmas.


Also, making the think up was a very demanding literacy task for me! Once your students have had a go at one of these types of puzzles, get them to make up their own. There's loads of quote sites around or they can use some favourite song lyrics or whatever else. Thinking of words that contain the letters you want can be quite tricky.

Day 14: Snowflakes

Paper snowflakes. A Mathsmas essential. My snowflake-making craft has improved significantly since the advent of Mathsmas. Largely through lessons learnt from "Make your own paper snowflakes", which I bought as a gift for a colleague then shamelessly borrowed and used extensively. Did you know they are supposed to be hexagon-based? You probably did. I didn't.

So I did a worksheet all those years ago with a cloze passage, some facts, symmetry, and folding based on working out the angle to fold it on. Here it is.

Of course there are other cool snowflakes to make, like these twisty paper ones. For me, the little snips and cuts and experimentation of the traditional ones has a certain feel to it.

Day 12: Calculator Word Stories

These are from an Australian company called 10 Ticks that I signed up for a while ago. They have a whole bunch of worksheets with some very cool, different ideas, and they also have a whole pack of Christmas maths worksheets.

You have to sign up, and for a while they seemed to send a lot of emails, but I haven't noticed that recently.

These word stories are pretty cool. The idea is you answer the questions on the calculator and it makes a word which you then fill in to the story.

You could get a class to do this (Christmas or not) as an activity to write their own stories. On second thoughts, maybe they shouldn't write their own stories. They would all be about boobs.

Other sheets from the Christmas pack include permutating baubles (exploration of permutations using colours), Christmas symmetry, and some general puzzle-type things.

They also have a colour-by-solutions Christmas pack. This is an idea I've explored myself, a colour-by where the work is a little bit harder and the answers aren't necessarily numbers. Mine was a colour-by-like-terms. I'll have to find that. And make it Christmassy. I think it was a dinosaur.

Anyway these ones include simplifying fractions, colouring by rounding, by number properties and by substituting into an algebraic expression. Pretty cool.

Day 7: Christmas Maths Worksheets Part 2

It was weird that when I searched recently for Christmas maths worksheets that this one didn't come up in the first couple of pages. I even tried searching for the specific topics I knew the sheets were on, but no result. I had to go to my hard-copy Mathsmas folder and find the URL there. They are from Maths-Worksheets who have a whole section on Christmas worksheets. How did this not come up??

Sheets include loads of topics, mainly worded problems based around a Christmas theme. They range from basic operations up to some difficult data, probability and measurement problems.

Favourites of mine include the ones about wrapping paper and ribbon required for wrapping different presents (perimeter and surface area), the temperature in different areas around Santa's workshop (negative numbers), and how likely you are to pick a present of a certain colour out of a stocking (probability).

Day 6: Circumference and Area of Christmas Baubles

Posting every day? Who's stupid idea was this?

Lucky I am vaguely prepared. Here's one from my first year of Maths teaching:

I'm sure this is a theme which could be expanded on too, but in it's current form at least we have a nice worksheet, some actual measurement in the topic of measurement, and another pretty thing to colour and put on the wall.

Have a good weekend everyone! I'm off to another Katoomba High Girls Night.

Day 4: Christmas Colour-by-numbers

These worksheets are only very simply addition and subtraction but great fun and really cute pictures to have to put up around the room as the end of the year approaches.

This is the display from 2010. I remember being surprised at how much my students of all ages loved these! Also featured Christmas sudoku (which I'll mention later) and a turkey (which I won't).

Day 3: Christmas Maths Worksheets Part 1

A lot of "holiday themed" worksheets are just normal questions with a few themed images around the edges. Which is ok I guess, but I'm looking for my themes to be a little more integrated.

Maths-Drills have a bunch that can be found here, and they range in how genuinely Christmassy they are. They include a few of the lame kind, but they have made a genuine effort with the others, and in any case they are all pretty and well-presented. And free!

Problem contexts include adding presents on Santa's list, ordering numbered baubles, Christmas word problems, reading tables about Santa's route between different cities, number patterns about how many toys the elves make each day, and of course a number plane picture.

Oops! I failed primary school maths :(

Day 1: Ratio Pictures

Let's start with something I actually created myself. Ratios can be a tricky subject for some but concrete or visual things help and make it more fun. For the end of the year, sometimes you need everyone to chill out, relax, and do a small amount of maths mixed in with a large amount of colouring.

I've put the images in pretty massive so they can be downloaded and printed clearly.

 
Penguins! Drawn by me. Their hats need to be coloured in the ratio described on the sign. The rest of the colouring is free-style.

This one was made using a free gingerbread man font. 

A four-part ratio, but if you just colour in as you go along the chain it'll still be pretty easy. Drawn by me.

Ratios of candy canes, baubles, present tags and present colours! Drawn by me. The font I used for the text is called Santa's Sleigh, it's one of my Christmas favourites.

Probability Games and Worksheets

My year 9s have been doing a topic on Probability. I like to start with some simple fun activities, including playing Deal or No Deal online. This group got so into it and wanted to play all the time, so I made a worksheet to justify us doing so!

My method of eliminating composite numbers first seems quite successful. Deal!

You can find my Deal or No Deal Worksheet at a lovely resource site called MathsLinks, in the Maths Faculty section. You have to login but you can do so through google or facebook or various other things as well as registering with the site individually. It is a valuable repository of resources and ideas provided by Maths teachers.

The other game I love is Higher or Lower at subtangent.com, so I made a worksheet for that to, which is also uploaded to MathsFaculty. The Higher or Lower Worksheet is simple theoretical probability.

With both of these, I like to run through the game a few times, discuss the theoretical probabilities on the board as we go, then follow up with the worksheet, and maybe a promise that if there's time the student who does the best work can be the next contestant.

(Oh and it was a good deal, I only had $2000 in my suitcase)