Rocket building, budgeting and statistics

TES maths adviser Craig Barton (of mrbarton maths.com) has created this collection to highlight the Best of TES resources, which he showcased at this year’s TSM Workshop, in London last month.

Mr Barton’s top ten consists of his favourite secondary maths resources, including videos, games and thinking activities that will help you to get the most out of your pupils.

To encourage team building and planning, jhleung has shared a rocket- building exercise, which also incorporates elements of business and science. In groups, pupils are given a budget of pound;1 million with which they have to buy the materials and professional advice to build a rocket.

Students have to use skills such as adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing money as well as their knowledge of measuring mass, volume and time, in order to succeed.

The ILIM (Improving Learning in Mathematics) resources are really helpful. These have been uploaded by SecondaryMathsNatStrats to provide a lesson plan of activities for teaching statistics.

They contain techniques to help S1-3 learners of mathematics to understand and interpret bar charts, pie charts and box and whisker plots. There are suggestions for starting the lesson, whole-class discussion and working in groups.

One of Mr Barton’s favourites is the “Gapminder Video 3 - Marriage and Children”. This looks at the relationship between the age women are getting married and their fertility rate, and reveals some startling results.

Then there’s Algebra Bingo, contributed by Zebfriedman. This includes bingo games for co-ordinates, direct proportion, expanding and multiplying over one bracket.

tes.co.uktsm-workshop.