My old friend the second derivative, we've been expecting you...

Question for #ALevelMaths teachers. When teaching the exponential form of a complex number, how do you motivate this intuitively? I will (soon) be teaching this and interested in the various ways of doing it. #MathsToday #UKMathsChat

You've heard of elf on the shelf but have you heard of

In Year 11 foundation #mathstoday we're doing just a past paper. Energy has waned and getting new content across so close to the holiday (we break up tomorrow) is really tough. Any tips for keeping new learning going before the holidays?

A simple, but one of my favourite, worksheets from mathspad today. I like the way the jumbled answers are in terms of pi or written to two decimal places. It forces the learners to be conscious about the distinction between the two. #MathsToday

#MathsToday Same but different parametric equations to match to their graphs. We had a lovely 15 minute discussion based on this task, plus lots of Desmos animated particles to help us think about the x- and y-coordinates changing at different rates.

I tried something different to help an #ALevelMaths student who was stuck with a question: instead of telling them what to do, I wrote down my thoughts about how I would solve a question (kind of like @davidkbutler.bsky.social does with #TryMathsLive, except I never actually did the question).

#MathsToday "Slanty" shapes were turned into right shapes by imagining them as stacks of paper which needed a push. This helped us identify needed lengths and ignore distractions. The aim was long-term learning, not short-term performance obtained by using formulae. Time will tell.

Two triangles with the same area. Which has the greater perimeter? How do you know? No calculators. Thanks to @studymaths.bsky.social for the geoboard software on mathsbot.com

The mathematician David Bessis believes that mathematical skill is not innate, but learned. “Genius is not an essence. It’s a state. It’s a state that you build by doing a certain job.”

In #MathsToday I used stem sentences to support teaching of expanding brackets. I was pleasantly surprised to hear pupils respond to questions using the structure of the stem sentence without me prompting them to do so. Would love to hear others' experiences of stem sentences in secondary maths.

In #mathstoday I was asked by a year 11 whether it could be possible that the perimeter is larger than the area (because this was the case in many problems). To him, this was impossible because the 'edge' is smaller than the 'inside'. What else do students find hard conceptually in this topic?

After #MathsToday I created a new fill in the blanks generator on Normal Distribution. www.interactive-maths.com/normal-distr... You can choose what is revealed / hidden for any randomly generated distribution by clicking. Easy to screenshot into a presentation, or use live.

This is an issue at my new school. Students want a formula for every shape, but they then forget those formulae and need to ask for the same formulae next lesson. Teaching them like you have above hasn't seemed to solve that problem like it usually does. So I'm interested to see the responses here

Advice sought: I am about to teach Year 11 Foundation area, perimeter, volume, surface area of 2D/3D shapes. In theory, they have done all this before but every time they are asked to calculate the area of a triangle it is like seeing it again for the first time. #MathsToday #MathsTeaching

With Year 12 today we were looking at remainder theorem and we did the very lovely true or false task from Integral maths. See also here my mini-whiteboard check before letting them get on which was nice as it forced them to think about the positions of the numbers. #Alevelmaths #mathstoday

Calling all Maths teachers! What are some of your all-time great tasks for secondary Maths? Ones that could have their place in any curriculum, one that should be studied in PGCE courses, ones that started whole new genres of tasks... ... or just ones you really like. (see some of mine below)

what is ironing if not differential topology

With Year 11 F today we are beginning to revisit nth term rules of arithmetic sequences. First, a task I made deducing the hundredth term of sequences constructed with dots and "describing" the nth term. #mathstoday

In lieu of grade boundaries, I showed them these histograms, of previous students grouped by the grade they ended up with. Took a bit of explaining, but I hope it helped them see what they were on track for, without me having to give them an explicit grade. #MathsToday

In #mathstoday I came up with a new tool on solving quadratic equations using factorising. www.interactive-maths.com/solving-quad... You can choose what you reveal or hide giving lots of flexibility.

In #mathstoday, apparently 41 -- in addition to 67 -- is a funny number...

T&i or algebra?

In #mathstoday I did an assessment with Year 13. It was old-specification C3 June 2013. I liked this question and, in particular, part (d) which really gets them to think about what inverses mean. I have not seen many questions that could not be solved by brute force.

In #MathsToday I have been working on some problems from a French textbook for the equivalent of year 13. I did a nice problem: Determine all integers n such that n - 4 divides 2n + 3 It was hard, honestly! Does anyone know if there are equivalent units in the #ALevelMaths (further) modules?

I am not sure that this is the best example, but in #mathstoday I tried to tap into their intuition to teach proof by contradiction.

One of my favourite xkcd's

I really do think that colour is helpful to identify steps in multi stage problems. But there is also scope to use it to link parts of a solution to the words in the question.

Are we doing students a disservice by showing them how they can do "reverse chain rule" questions using the method of substitution? Or, at least, showing them too early? #mathstoday #mathschat #alevelmaths

This year, my year 12s have not taken to integration. Normally I find students can instinctively work backwards to find anti-derivatives of simple polynomials, but today I found myself needing to be very explicit about how to integrate. We spent a long time on this tarsia from Integral maths.

I'm not sure, but I believe I owe the credits for these lovely questions to @drfrostmaths.bsky.social. In any case, they led to an extremely nice discussion about integration and the limits of what we can and cannot (yet) do. #mathstoday #mathschat

If you wish you had questions you could ask your students to encourage them to use their intuition, then check out this ready to go list from Tracy Zager: tjzager.com/wp-content/uplo... You can get her book here: amzn.to/4eSBiMY

Are your students working on parallel and perpendicular lines? Try out these two Open Middle problems from Bryan Anderson: www.openmiddle.com/equation... www.openmiddle.com/equation...

The thinking required to do it by a rote method is easier than the thinking required to understand it properly - that's why Science teachers do it that way. If getting to the answer is all that matters, why wouldn't students do it this way? We need to set expectations that it is not all that matters

#MathsToday It's teddy bear time!

More quadratics for Year 11 Fd. It was really interesting noticing how asking for the roots before asking for the factorised form prevented them from forgetting what a root actually is. They started by finding the roots by trial and error, noticing a pattern after a while... #mathschat #mathstoday

In #MathsToday a student called out 67 and then another year 9 said "for god's sake". It's even annoying the students who used to say skibidi. We also did some nice expanding brackets.

In #MathsToday pupils vote which of these were equivalent to the original expression. 1 vote Mario, 15 votes Luigi, 1 vote Bowser and 20 votes Peaches. One pupil explained she voted for Peaches because she just knew you multiply. So we then looked at it expanded and why multiplying works.

Year 11 Foundation were finding roots today by substituting into quadratics at random. Will they accidentally discover the relationship between a quadratic's roots and factorised form when I queue it up tomorrow? TBD. #mathschat #mathstoday

I wrote a “best guess” paper this evening for GCSE Maths Paper 2 on Friday 7th Nov and filmed a video to go through it. Edexcel Foundation! Hope it’s helpful! static1.squarespace.com/static/67560...

Here's the Maths (KS3/4) pages from the Curriculum Review

Academy of Inquiry Based Learning is an organization focused on improving teaching and learning in higher education mathematics. www.inquirybasedlearning.org

Our school is starting a project to grow student agency and bring more inquiry-based learning into lessons. We want it to feel meaningful — helping students think deeply about how they learn, not just what they learn. I'd love to learn from others doing similar work. #education #teaching #EduSky

I love teaching quadratics. I find there it makes a lovely closed universe to explore. And we start with factorising! Today, my favourite factorising task with some low-prior attaining Year 11s. They hate how the numbers are "the same", but it gets them thinking. #mathstoday

As my school embarks on a journey to embed more inquiry into our classrooms, it has been helpful to read and reflect on this paper, Inquiry-based learning in Grade 9 mathematics (Doz, Zaklej, Crotic, 2025), referenced by @inquirymaths.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

NEW on the #inquirymaths site for October: * Implicit differentiation inquiry - devised by Zelimir Jovicic * Latest peer-reviewed research suggesting inquiry enhances conceptual understanding and fosters deeper engagement. www.inquirymaths.org #inquirymath #mathsinquiry

Starter for AS level class before moving on to transformations of graphs. Sketch a quadratic and mark its turning points. Extension: are all quadratics a translation of y = x²? It made a nice discussion which led us nicely into why f(x *+* 3) is a translation by (3 0), to the *left*. #mathstoday

What is a good student? Does it mean you know everything exactly when you're supposed to know it because that's when everyone else knows it? Or Is it being open to learning new things?? Join "lucky 10,000 club", learned a new thing today, it's your time to shine!! @themathguru.bsky.social #ATMNE25

I love breaking the unspoken rule about fraction diagrams (all pieces congruent, not just equal in area). Here are a few of my favourite non-standard representations. A one radian sector fills half the unit square, the curves y = x² and y = √x enclose 1/3 of the square. Can you come up with more?

Spending time 'guessing' the solutions to simultaneous equations so that students learn what finding the solution means before moving on to more formal methods. It's amazing how complex an equation they manage to 'guess' the answer to without a formal method when left the time to puzzle #mathstoday