This page is set up for the BOYD professional development day at the International School of Geneva, Campus des Nations, May 21st 2013. The focus is on the impact of having computers at your disposal all the time on mathematics teaching. Resources that are used...

'Explore a transformation to help Mr Greedy slim down his tummy' Mr Greedy liked to eat! In fact Mr Greedy loved to eat, and the more he ate the fatter he became.Source: Mr Greedy by Roger Hargreaves However, as you can see Mr Clever has found...

'Create beautiful polygons and stars using online microworld and discover for yourself rules for exterior angles.’ Polygons and stars are visually appealing because of their symmetry. But what is it that lies at the heart of these images? They...

Age 15+ Time 2h. Students find transforming functions one of the most demanding topics in mathematicsat this level. In particular, the effect a has on the function, f(x) for y=af(x) and y=f(ax) and understanding just what...

So, while the Mr Men are enjoying a revival in UK teaching I thought I would jump on the bandwagon with some ideas for using the Mr Men in some Mathematics lessons. I blogged yesterday in support of my colleague Russel Tarr whose 'Mr Men Lesson' came under...

For any of you who are UK based, you will doubtless have followed the now infamous 'Mr Men Speech' by Michael Gove last week. For those of you who are not, follow the links - it is worth a read whatever your base or perspective. The issue hits home on...

'If the world was a village of 100 people....' This page is about a joint project done with the mathematics and geography departments and involving primary and secondary students at the International School of Toulouse. It was inspired by two key...

'Dynamic scattergraphs, oodles of real data and more..' We are really excited about Gapminder. It is great to have real, relevant data about the world so easily available. Better than that, it offers a brilliant, dynamic, visual tool to help interpret...

1. Equation Reflections - an introduction to how Geogebra facilitates students making the links for themselves across different topics: geometry, number and algebra. TASK Create a quick question sheet for your students to complete next lesson. 2....

In this activity you will discover the properties of straight lines. There is a quick game to help you discover how to plot horizontal and vertical lines before you investigate the properties of diagonal lines. Once you are confident with this you should...

Age: 13+ Time:30-40 minutes. Practice interpreting statistics and graphs, percentages and ratio and have a look at some real data about HIV and AIDS worldwide. Students are given eight pieces of information about eight different...

What is random? How can we be sure that when we spin a spinner we do it randomly? How can we predict events that are random? You should consider and answer these questions and many more during this activity. Here you are encouraged to create and program your...

'Help the firefighter put out the fire by describing the correct path of the water' This activity is all about describing parabolas or quadratic graphs. In the final games you will need to help the firefighter in his mission to put out the fires by...

'Focussed groups of activities and ideas related to different tools!' This is an new area of the website which is very much under development. Hopefully it will build steadily over time. We feel that there are enough resources on the site now for us...

For the puzzle section of this activity the teacher will need to have printed, cut out, and preferably (since then the pieces can be re-used from year to year), laminated the below jigsaw of Kadinsky's 'Colour Studies'. Quadrilateral Art Jigsaw Quadrilaterals The...

The pigs have stolen the birds’ eggs. That makes them angry, very angry. They take aim and launch themselves towards the pigs to get their revenge and reclaim their babies. Based on the classic angry birds game you will be guiding the birds to ensure...

Dynamic geometry and graphing software provide an amazing opportunity to engage learners. Beautiful graphs, dynamic images, video type games can provide a hook to instantly absorb students. In this 90 minute workshop you will learn how to produce resources...

'If you were to invent your own mathematical symbols and notation, what would it look like?' How do we divide numbers into different groups: square numbers, whole numbers, multiples of 3, factors of 36, numbers less than 21 . . etc? One way is...

Here is the third shape to work with! Move the shape around and try to put the properties and shapes under the one of the headings, 'Always', 'Sometimes' and 'Never'. Remember the main activity page is Indestructible Quadrilaterals.

Here is the fifth shape to work with! Move the shape around and try to put the properties and shapes under the one of the headings, 'Always', 'Sometimes' and 'Never'. Remember the main activity page is Indestructible Quadrilaterals.

Here is the fourth shape to work with! Move the shape around and try to put the properties and shapes under the one of the headings, 'Always', 'Sometimes' and 'Never'. Remember the main activity page is Indestructible Quadrilaterals.

Here is the second shape to work with! Move the shape around and try to put the properties and shapes under the one of the headings, 'Always', 'Sometimes' and 'Never'. Remember the main activity page is Indestructible Quadrilaterals.

Here is the sixth shape to work with! Move the shape around and try to put the properties and shapes under the one of the headings, 'Always', 'Sometimes' and 'Never'. Remember the main activity page is Indestructible Quadrilaterals.

Here is the seventh shape to work with! Move the shape around and try to put the properties and shapes under the one of the headings, 'Always', 'Sometimes' and 'Never'. Remember the main activity page is Indestructible Quadrilaterals.

This activity gets students to discover how to produce regular polygons. It is best attempted before they know the sum of exterior angles. The aim is to generate a set of instructions for an online logo turtle to produce regular polygons and stars. Students...

If you want to describe a point you use coordinates (2,5), for lines you use functions: y=-3x+2, but what about whole "regions"? One way is to use "inequalities". An "inequal" function is one in which you define the y-coordinate...

Calimero (the little black cartoon character with an egg shell on his head) has been taken back in time to the age of the dinosaurs! Quickly move all five of the eggs into the safety zone. Be careful to interpret the inequalities signs correctly to ensure you...

Depending on your internet connection these games may take a few seconds to load up. If you have any problems try refreshing the page. To knock over the pins type in the correct equation of the line, press enter then press the play button. Have...

Depending on your internet connection these games may take a few seconds to load up. If you have any problems try refreshing the page. To knock over the pins type in the correct equation of the line, press enter then press the play button. Have...

In Level7 below, your lasers have misfunctioned and are burning the baby! You must quickly reset them, before changing their positions. To change the inequality you have to type in <= to get the symbol and >= to get the symbol.

'Be creative and find how many ways you can put together 2,0,1 & 3 to make different numbers.' 2013 is the year and this brings a new challenge. This activity is the 2013 puzzle. Using ALL the digits in the year 2013 once and only once (you may not...

The following geogebra activities require you to move the slider and find a common slice of pie that fits perfectly into both fractions. Move the point on the third circle to show visually what the fractions add up (or subtract) to make. Once you have found this...

Almost everyone likes chocolate - and that's what makes sharing so hard! Each person's share is likely to be fairer if you're able to measure quantities exactly. You will play the classic game of Snakes & Ladders, but how well you do depends on how...

Welcome, welcome, benvenuti to Luigi's Lunch Lounge, or should I say: svaga hai to Taj's Indian delicacies. You have entered the Waiter/Waitress of the Year competition. As part of the selection process you will need to be quick at taking customer's...

'How long would it take you to count six million?' Big numbers present us with a real challenge! How do we understand their size and the significance of what they represent? Once numbers get past a certain size this gets harder and harder. One,...

Match the scattergraphs with the countries! This task is really easily explained! Simply decide which of the scattergraphs goes with which of the countries. To do this it might help to consider the following points. In the general, the graphs start in the...

'Spot patterns and describe the shapes of graphs' This is an investigation about a particular type of function: even functions and odd functions. You should be able to describe their properties using reflections and rotations, but can you find out...

If you haven't been on a Ferris Wheel yet, you've probably seen one. Close your eyes, picture yourself 90m off the ground, level with the main axel of the Singapore Flyer, the world's largest Ferris Wheel (as of 2011) and imagine how your vertical height changes...

The whole of the modern world is founded on our ability to be able to define perfectly the position, and movement, of waves. Mobile phones, X-ray machines, TVs, Telecommunications etc. harness the waves of light, sound, x-ray, gamma rays etc. in the physical world...

Using only multiplication and addition find a link between the numbers in the original "expressions" (what is the difference between an "expression" a "formula" and an "equation"?) and the factorised brackets. With the below activity sheet printed out...

The need for solving equations arises from a desire to know what values of an unknown will give a required quantity e.g. the exact quantity of salt peter required to make 20kg of gunpowder or, as in the video at the bottom of this page, working out when/where...

'How have AIDS and HIV affected life expectancy around the world?' This activity involves a study of eight different countries. You are given eight bits of information about them but you you don't know which bit of information goes with which country. The...

There are lots and lots of great videos out on the net that make an engaging introduction to mathematical concepts and techniques. This session aims to show you some examples of: 1. Applications of Mathematics 2. Beyond the classroom possibilities. 3....

Practice interpreting statistics and graphs, percentages and ratio and have a look at some real data about HIV and AIDS worldwide. Students are given eight pieces of information about eight different countries and asked to sort them in to a different group for...

'They live underground for 13years, 17years or other prime numbers, emerge for 3 weeks, eat, mate and then disappear underground again for another 13 to 17 years - why?' What is a Cicada? - Watch the two videos below to see Cicadas in action. Why does...

There was a time when one man/woman could know all that was currently known and be a leading light across a number of fields of human knowledge. The Renaissance Man had no boxes, borders or boundaries ("Boxes", by Charlie Winston). This activity explores: What...

'What impact have key events had on the health and wealth of nations over the last 200 years?' This activity makes use of the 'awesome' (a word that should be used less but is totally appropriate here) Gapminder World resource. The resource enables us to...

Click on Show in the Page Contents panel: at the top right of this page to navigate to the appropriate section. Below is a catalogue of videos for students to watch on their mobile phones or any other video enabled...

Click on Show in the Page Contents panel: at the top right of this page to navigate to the appropriate section. Below is a catalogue of videos for students to watch on their mobile phones or any other video...

"Learning experiences come when people are actively engaged in designing things, creating things, and inventing things - expressing themselves" (dmlcentral.net). In this activity you are asked to do just that! Use your creativity to produce some interesting...

“One thing we’ve seen is that the best learning experiences come when people are actively engaged in designing things, creating things, and inventing things - expressing themselves." (DMLCentral) The above statement is a good summary of what this...

Can you drag the vectors and put the "Sitting Bird" back together again (see "resources" below), restoring its colours to their former glory? How would you describe perfectly each movement required to piece it together? These are called vectors and once you...

'Learn how to factorise quadratics with this series of games and puzzles' This series of games is lots of fun and it will teach you about a very important concept in mathematics. Only when you can factorise quadratic expressions like the one in the red...

The following blog post is a quick response the question above that has been posed by the #globalmath group on twitter who are having a debate on this topic this evening based on some responses to this Questionnaire. I love this debate and like many good ones...

'Solve puzzles to find the mysteries behind algebra' What is the missing number? If I give you the answer, can you tell me the numbers in the question? If you enjoy a puzzle and a challenge you should like this activity. You’ll will be given some information...

‘Rock, paper, scissors for dice.’ Here are three dice with some amazing properties. To discover them you are going to play a simple two-player game. Inspect the dice and choose which you think is the best dice (that will give you the highest score...

'Discover the inner structure of linear sequences by teaching the computer to generate them for you!' Striking and surprising patterns exist in sequences. Understanding their inner structure with this activity in which a spreadsheet can do much of...

Generally students enjoy playing games (who doesn't). Whilst we can find many attractive and fun games online I'm often disappointed with the quality of the questions. If it's fun, but the students don't really learn much mathematics what's the point? I'm...

This has come up a couple of times recently and seeing a twitter discussion on 'brilliant activities using manipulatives' I decided to write this down quickly. This is a beautiful and simple activity to teach arithmetic sequences using manipulatives. Of course...

This page is part of an activity to learn about the properties of exponential functions and their transformations. Here the aim of the two games is to find the equations of different exponential functions. Once the correct function has been found the applet can...

'Discover the properties of Exponential Graphs and pit your wits against the computer with some fun games' Exponential functions are incredibly useful. The simplest 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ..., doubling is probably the simplest case but they can be seen everywhere:...

It is essential that you do not confuse surface area with volume. To confuse the two is like confusing weight with height - they are measures of completely different things. It's the sort of confusion that make the older generations complain about "basic literacy...

The cross-section measurements of the right-angled, triangular faced prisms are 3 by 4 cm, 6 by 4cm and 6 by 8cm. The largest is therefore four times the volume of the smallest. The triangular 3 by 4 cm right-angled triangular prism has the same area and...

It's always nice to know that other mathematics teachers appreciate the site so it was a proud moment for the site to get a glowing testimony from Craig Barton AKA MrBartonmaths and the main man behind mathematics resources in the TES. Here's Craig's short video: Here...

This page is a discussion about 'What makes a good task?' The aim is to present the features of good activity that create powerful, effective and long lasting mathematical experiences for students from which they discover, learn and draw confidence through engagement....

'Whose results are best? Boys, Girls, Monkeys, Martians, Flying pigs, Babies or Robots?' All of the above species were asked to take a multiple choice mathematics test and the results were recorded. Now it is up to us to decide how the species compared...

Use this fun, fictional set of results on a number of levels! Processing data, calculating averages, quartiles, ranges and more. Most importantly this resource is great for comparing distributions. The data is full of surprises and two sets might have some things...

This activity is based around a set of transitive dice which have a rather surprising set of properties. They are NOT the classic 6-faced dice with numbers one through six on each face - they are far more interesting! Played against each other, rather like...

The abstraction of numbers is a fascinating topic for debate and discussion and the root of much confusion in secondary school matehmatics students, not to mention many of the worlds adults! As teachers, our challenge is to keep developing successful activities...

'Explore the concept of indices by considering what they look like' 'Squared' and 'Cubed' can be explained by using 2 and 3 dimensions. The area of a square with length 5 is 52, the volume of a cube with side length 7 is 73, so how can we represent 54? This...

This activity comes around year after year for me and I love that each time you do an activity you come up with new ideas about how to develop it. It is even better when those new ideas come from students! The activity is Visualising Indices. This year, one...

Take a look at the picture flickr gallery below. Can you work out what numbers each design represents and what factors were used to build it? Number theory is all about seeing relationships between numbers and seeing numbers you thought you knew everything...

'Sort out the triangles so you can work out the missing lengths!' There are lots of things that we can do with the 24 triangles used in this activity (download and print below)! The simplest way to describe this activity is that you have to find the missing...

A great triangle mystery! These 24 triangles can be split in to 8 groups of 3 similar triangles by matching the angles. Once in groups students can use proportional reasoning to work out the missing lengths on the similar triangles. This is one of those activities...

"x" is used to represent a number we don't know, but want to find. Roll the dice and "substitute" the number on the dice into your equation in place of "x". If this "solves the equation" (i.e. results in both sides of the equals sign being the same) then you win...

The activity aims to give a conceptual, visual representation of why there are a wide range of numerical fractions (an infinite amount?) that are actually equivalent i.e. represent the same amount e.g. = Move the slider on the Fraction Wheels page (see resources...

THREE-DAY WORKSHOP at OUNDLE SCHOOL, PETERBOROUGH Richard joins the infamous TSM team and 120 workshop participants for the annual event at Oundle School in July. For the first time Geogebra forms part of the 3 day mathematics and ICT workshop. Other sessions...

Objectives - To support workshop participants to get to grips with geogebra software and demonstrate its uses in the mathematics classroom. Aims - Participants should observe potential, get practice, be inspired to use it in the classroom! Content -...

Olympic winning performances have been improving at a remarkable rate since the modern games first began in 1896. Below you have the winning times for the last 30 Olympics in the 100m men and women's event, the men and women's High Jump, Show jumping...

Here you will find support materials for some of the basic geometry capabilities of Geogebra You may wish to keep your own notes on the printed copies of the worksheets that are embedded below. Document to share our notes from Geometry basics Make...

Here you will find support materials for some of the basic and more advanced capabilies of graphing in Geogebra. You may wish to keep your own notes on the printed copies of the worksheets that are embedded below. Try these three tasks ...

'Make a dynamic logo for the Olympic Games' The instantly recognisable Olympic Games logo is composed of 5 interlocking rings. Created 100 years ago it is in dire need of bringing into the 21st Century. For our modern era, surely it should move,...

Use the menu at the top right hand side of this page to navigate between topics. Information is beautiful - David McCandless talks about his project for visualising data and the art of presenting it in different ways. He talks about...

'Roll the dice , make your number, round it and see who is closest to 50' This is a really simple but engaging game to help practise rounding to a given number of decimal places! Use 10 sided dice to generate some random numbers for you. In the first...

Can you think of anything that moves in waves? Our whole modern world is founded on our ability to define, with complete precision, the movement of waves. In this activity you are going to use software (Autograph, Geogebra, Microsoft Mathematics 4.0), to explore...

Formatting the page y=sinx+c or y=cosx+c transformations Formatting Grid Lines, Axes and Setting the Scale to Degrees Finding the exact coordinates of the maximum, minimum and x-intercepts Locating the "Principal Axis" Overview...

Creating a shape, a vector and linking the two in a translation Fast forward to 1m51 if using Geogebra. &amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;gt;

'Construct your own indestructible quadrilaterals based on your understanding of their fundamental properties' This is an activity in its own right, but does follow on really nicely from Indestructible Quadrilaterals and this will certainly help you...

'Push, pull and stretch these shapes to find out which quadrilaterals they are!' Each of the shapes in this activity have been carefully constructed so that there are some properties that it ALWAYS has, some properties that it can SOMETIMES have and...

'Produce beautiful images using trigonometric graphs.' The main part of this activity is to produce lovely images like the one on the left. To do that you will need to recognise the patterns behind these graphs. The secret lies in the transformations...

Mathematics can be beautiful, but the students who might appreciate the proof of the irrationality of root 2 are perhaps, and unfortunately, in a fairly small minority. However, students really do appreciate the beauty of the graphs that they are able to...

Below is a catalogue of videos for students to watch on their mobile phones or any other video enable (MP4) portable device. Watching these whilst on a bus, car, train journey, during the commercial/advertising break whilst watching...

'Understand all the things that are true about a given diagram, choose the right one and re-arrange it to suit you!' Once you know about SOHCAHTOA the next challenge is to find out how to apply it to different problems. After some practice it gets easier...

Works of art, architectural and industrial designs, packaging etc. show a real mastery of forms and their properties. The triangle is the building block of many two dimensional forms and the properties that result. This activity offers the first steps towards...

The headquarters of the United States Department of Defense is The Pentagon. The shape is based on a regular pentagon and it houses the largest floor space office area in the world. You might like to consider the advantages of using a pentagonal rather than...

Divisions are just a different way of doing multiplications: can be written as the multiplication . You can do exactly the same with fractions, so if you know how to multiply fractions you will be able to work out how to divide them too. The following video...

The five circles of the Olympic emblem were originaly designed to represent the five participating continents at the Olympic games. They are all equal in size and at least one of the five colours used should appear in the flag of every nation! This exercise is...