Love2Learn

As mentioned in my last post, Walking the walk, I recently completed a 2-week casual teaching block and agonised about walking MY walk. So, here’s another story…this time with Year 8s and on the topic of Rates and Ratios. I had one lesson (yes ONE, the 3 with the year7s was a luxury in comparison) [...]

Problems vs. Exercises Inspired by a blogpost by David Cox (@dcox21), I decided to use the same problem and added an extra fraction. Anyone following me for some time would see that I value mathematical thinking and, as David said, this is a good one to show problem-solving skills. I think it’s also a good [...]

Finding a quantity given a percentage (or fraction) is a useful skill yet considered to be an extension topic for year 8. I thought I could give it a go but set the scene, so-to-speak, without the oft-used context of shopping and sales. Enter the Vitruvian Man. Wikipedia has a good image and brief explanation [...]

I wanted to make this lesson a bit more interesting as well as incorporate opportunities for connections with other maths topics. I knew my year 8 class students loved music so I devised a very simple poll on Rob Thomas (one of the students was going to his concert): like him, don’t like him, don’t know him. [...]