#MathsToday de @catrionaagg.bsky.social
187 publicacions descarregades el 10/07/2026
Catriona Agg · 2026-06-12T15:47:58.101Z
I’ve found making regular #MathsToday posts really helps me to feel positive about my job. Reflecting on what has worked well that day (and not just the inevitable bad moments) is such a good habit, and one I wish I’d developed as a trainee.
Catriona Agg · 2026-03-17T17:57:11.635Z
And if you have seen any of my #MathsToday posts over the last few years, you’ll already have an idea of how great our shared resources are. We have lots of involvement with @vennmathshub.bsky.social too.
Plus you get to work with really lovely people, and enjoy the occasional Waffle Friday 🧇
Catriona Agg · 2026-01-30T18:24:53.131Z
Introducing arcs and sectors to Y10 #MathsToday
This is my last chance to post for a while - maternity leave starts on Monday!
Catriona Agg · 2026-01-12T18:27:06.316Z
Y8 were factorising today. First we worked backwards from some area models, and then used prime factor tiles to model some harder examples. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2026-01-08T19:49:47.708Z
Some whiteboard questions to revise graph transformations with Y12 #ALevelMaths.
The final 3 were inspired by one of the questions from @mr-man-maths.bsky.social’s MathsConf talk, that was apparently badly answered last summer. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2026-01-07T16:57:51.416Z
This post was perfect timing for me, because I was able to use these questions with Y8 today. It’s such a nice sequence, involving working forwards and backwards - so much more interesting than repeatedly starting from the beginning. Plus it forced them to lay their work out properly! #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2026-01-06T17:19:57.125Z
By the way, why not make your New Year’s resolution be to start sharing little things that went well in your maths lessons using #MathsToday?
Whenever I make a habit of this, it always makes me feel more positive about my job. It’s lovely to scroll through and see what everyone else is doing too.
Catriona Agg · 2026-01-06T17:13:58.715Z
Having some fun with area models with Y8. I love the bit where you go into negatives and it all still works! I often skip this step, but (as well as being a nice demo for negxneg=pos) it helps overcome their distrust at negative terms appearing as lengths/areas in algebraic models. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-12-16T21:31:30.560Z
Y8 expanding and factorising using algebra tiles. They needed a lot of practice of writing down the identity from the picture so we did loads of MWB questions like the 1st picture before the main task. (I accidentally differentiated too, by forgetting to give my strongest pair any tiles) #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-12-12T17:15:22.371Z
Our Y8 SOW sensibly includes recapping negative arithmetic before they start expanding brackets. This year I realised I don’t usually get them to practise negatives in the context of algebra, though, so in #MathsToday I gave them these questions to fill that gap.
Catriona Agg · 2025-12-11T19:23:12.027Z
Y12 started graph transformations today, so to warm up we did these function notation completion table. I had a lot of fun constructing this task, especially making the second table so that as many cells as possible could be filled.
#MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-12-08T22:08:08.070Z
Had a lot of fun this morning watching Y13 trying to work out how to fit a normal curve to a binomial distribution #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-12-04T20:06:39.034Z
Today we did the Teddy Bear task, and it was perfect - for the first time there was an extended period of quiet buzz in the room as they worked purposefully on a task while talking to their partner. #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
undergroundmathematics.org/circles/tedd...
Catriona Agg · 2025-12-03T18:06:16.749Z
Today’s Y13 starter - I really like how c & d can be solved either by changing the inequality and using the original distribution, or by transforming the distribution and using the original values. #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-11-28T20:40:42.788Z
Used the wonderful MathsPad tangent drawing tool tool today with Y11. They loved coming up to the board to try and position the perfect tangent! Seeing this immediate, very visible, feedback before they all started drawing independently was so useful. #MathsToday
www.mathspad.co.uk/interactives...
Catriona Agg · 2025-11-28T19:14:07.097Z
This year I’ve ended up with the most silent Y12 class I’ve ever taught. Today I changed the seating plan and put this instruction at the top of the starter, and they actually talked to each other! #WeeklyWins #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-11-26T20:19:20.261Z
In #MathsToday Y13 filled this normal distribution table #ALevelMaths
I love this resource, especially when students get to the second one of the bottom row and get stuck, at which point I usually prompt them to look for where 0.7778 appears elsewhere. But today, that didn’t happen…
Catriona Agg · 2025-11-25T17:01:11.396Z
We’ve reached the time of year when the looky-likeys are starting to get serious for Y13FM #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-11-25T16:56:09.247Z
I enjoyed doing this question with Y7 #MathsToday. I need to remember to revisit this with Y8 when they start standard form - it’s exactly the way I want them to be thinking about it.
Catriona Agg · 2025-11-21T17:57:44.111Z
I used some of the statements from undergroundmathematics.org/quadratics/d... as a starter for Y12 before moving onto the discriminant. It was a nice excuse to get them using sliders and reasoning about graphs in order to reason about equations. #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-11-19T16:43:29.446Z
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
Catriona Agg · 2025-11-19T16:36:25.294Z
I was giving back mock papers in #MathsToday. I regretted reusing this slide from last year when a decent number of them started sniggering at my choice of grades. Apparently even Y11 still find this funny!
Catriona Agg · 2025-10-20T19:37:31.542Z
Y13 did their first set of integration looky-likeys in #MathsToday. Looking forward to lots more of this in the next few weeks!
The last one was a bit mean (I put it there to slow down the fast finishers) but they did manage it when I gave them the right substitution. #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-10-15T16:32:24.494Z
Today I realised that “integrates like” is the phrase I’ve been missing for talking about spotting the structure of an integral. #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-10-14T20:33:07.207Z
I thought Y7 might need a warm up to the task in the first picture, so I modelled a couple and got them to try their own numbers on MWB. Brilliantly, someone happened to get 23, 24 and 23. After such a near miss they were all very motivated to try and get a perfect triplet! #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-10-09T17:42:13.805Z
Really enjoyed today’s Y7 lesson: linking function machines, telling the ‘story’ of a variable, substitution and sequences, in order to generate sequences from an expression. I love these lessons when it feels like everything comes together! #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-10-03T20:11:38.010Z
I used this prompt with two Y8 classes today. In the 1st class their initial reactions were pretty evenly split between all the options. The 2nd class are higher-attaining mathematically, and the vast majority confidently went for £100. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-09-12T18:33:35.668Z
Highlight of today was showing Y8 how they could use prime factors to simplify ratios. I was impressed that they remembered that when all the factors are cancelled out it would simplify to 1 - I was expecting most of them to write 0 #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-09-12T18:33:35.667Z
On Thursday I used this brilliant Don Steward task with Y11. Love the fact that the later ones use simultaneous equations too! #MathsToday
donsteward.blogspot.com/2017/03/mean...
Catriona Agg · 2025-09-12T18:33:35.666Z
Wednesday was a very quiet day for me, but I enjoyed playing investigators with Y7. Everyone had to write a sequence that began 10,20… and then we tried to guess the rule that they had used. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-09-12T18:33:35.665Z
Tuesday’s lesson with Y12 was something no we talked about lots in last years A Level Pedagogy Work Group - the importance of explicitly teaching pupils how to sketch graphs. Was also good to teach them Desmos skills like rescaling the axes. #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-09-12T18:33:35.664Z
On Monday I got Y13 to find the turning points of these graphs as an intro to the chain rule. Partly because I like how sketching is so much better than the ‘obvious’ expand and differentiate, but also to make the point that we can use the extra structure to our advantage. #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-09-12T18:33:35.663Z
My favourite thing about the maths teacher community on Bluesky is #MathsToday. If you’ve not joined in before, I can really recommend it. Posting a highlight of your day is very uplifting!
I’ve kept forgetting this term, though, so going to attempt a week’s worth in one go…
Catriona Agg · 2025-09-05T19:40:48.691Z
Spent a slightly painful 15 minutes discussing Q2 with Y12 today. The problem wasn’t with spotting the patterns, but trying to formulate that into full sentences. If you teach #ALevelMaths, I’d be interested to know how your students get on with similar “describe and explain” tasks. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-09-04T17:00:42.433Z
Taught my first #MathsToday lessons of the year! I forgot how much fun this topic is with Year 7. Today we played “guess the method from the calculation”.
Catriona Agg · 2025-07-11T17:08:32.709Z
I asked Y8 what they thought the typical wage was from this list and was impressed by their suggestions! They even came up with the midrange, and were pleased to find out it had a name.
Followed up with an averages classic! #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-07-10T17:04:32.987Z
I did pretty much the same lesson today with Y10, although much quicker. It worked really well - we were able to recap all the index laws they knew and explain why they work, and then move onto negative and fractional powers. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-07-09T18:58:46.203Z
My Y12 FM class have finished all the content for this year, so there’s time for some fun problem-solving! In #MathsToday we did this great rationalising task. undergroundmathematics.org/polynomials/...
Any suggestions for other activities I could use? Your favourite UM tasks, perhaps?
Catriona Agg · 2025-07-05T15:09:30.157Z
Y8 are doing area, so I got to use the ‘plan without numbers’ approach for compound area that worked so well last year. This year’s class are much more confident, but still struggled at first to describe what the purpose of their calculations were, rather than just the mechanics of it. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-07-05T14:10:56.013Z
A #MathsToday catch-up post: here are some of the things I’ve done this week.
Y10 learned about recurring decimals, so I used this Don Steward task (reformatted to remove fractional indices). I didn’t realise how nice the answers would be! donsteward.blogspot.com/2017/02/recu...
Catriona Agg · 2025-06-23T16:43:18.412Z
In Y9 #MathsToday I introduced the formulae for speed and density.
First we did some ratio table practice and I emphasised how it’s useful to draw in a multiplier starting from 1.
Then I removed the numbers and asked them to set up the tables again, then put in multipliers to get the formulae.
Catriona Agg · 2025-06-18T19:21:39.557Z
After our success using ratio tables for percentages and similar shapes, I was looking forward to teaching compound measures to Y9. But some of them have struggled much more than I expected to put the numbers in the right place, particularly remembering to give speed its own row. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-06-09T17:47:28.338Z
Properties of quadrilaterals with Y8. They sort of know this all already but it still always seems like a bit of a slog!
Today we did everything on this hierarchical diagram rather than as a list, which I hope made it seem more logical. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-06-06T20:20:44.728Z
Revising the intersections of planes with Y12 FM. A couple of them were really thrown by Q2&3 having the same answer! #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-06-06T20:06:59.459Z
Solving one problem in multiple ways has turned out to be quite an effective way to convince Y8 to write down their reasons. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-06-04T18:00:41.774Z
Y12 are revising for internal exams next week, so in #MathsToday I made them come up with a plan of action for some questions. It was interesting trying to get them to be specific about what they were actually going to do, e.g. "I'd start by finding the identity" - how? - "well I'd draw a table"
Catriona Agg · 2025-06-04T17:39:51.767Z
Haven't done a Y9 trig update in a while, so here's the last three lessons' worth of #MathsToday:
First we learnt how to label the sides, so that it was easier to identify which multipler to use when the triangles aren't in the same orientation.
Catriona Agg · 2025-05-23T19:51:58.609Z
This is always one of my favourite #ALevelMaths lessons - introducing infinite geometric series. Y12 surprised me this year by generally preferring a geometric approach over algebraic tricks - usually it’s the other way round! #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-05-15T17:23:35.300Z
I’ve decided I really like this way of thinking. It seems to me that it gets to the heart of why standard form is useful - because it tells us the size of the number we’re dealing with. And it was particularly good in today’s lesson on adding and subtracting. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-05-15T16:47:23.423Z
A starter with a hidden theme for Y8, before our lesson on adding and subtracting in standard form. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-05-12T17:40:21.907Z
I’ve been teaching proof by induction to Y12 in #MathsToday (and last week, but I’ve not been good at posting) using this proof machine analogy, which I think is great. #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-05-01T18:51:21.387Z
I observed a trainee using this activity today - students have to decide which supplier to use for each item. Y10 were disappointing unappreciative of the puns in some of the company names.
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-04-29T20:50:20.916Z
Linking ratio and algebra with Y10 #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-04-24T16:28:35.358Z
Looking for different strategies in Y8 #MathsToday. I was impressed that one of them knew that they could do 50% of 36 for the second question!
Catriona Agg · 2025-04-24T16:19:50.857Z
This kept Y13 busy for a while. Can you guess what (FM) topic we were starting today? #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-04-23T21:45:24.832Z
Y9 have struggled with enlargements over a couple of lessons before the holidays. Today I was much more consistent with my use of colour and it felt like we finally got somewhere. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-04-23T17:23:56.038Z
A Y8 asked a great question at the end of this task. They’d noticed that all the answers were the sum of two other numbers in the question, and asked if that would always be true. So we tested it on other examples that fitted the same structure, including fractional values. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-04-23T17:13:10.602Z
Tried the same trick with vectors today. In hindsight I probably could have chosen a more interesting example - I found it harder to write the prompts for this one.
#ALevelMaths
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-04-22T17:53:29.274Z
To introduce logarithmic scales with #CoreMaths, we looked at this graph from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com, and then at his explanation for the scale. I really like this example of a log scale in the wild! #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-31T16:48:38.237Z
Another same&different activity with Y8. I think they were surprised that there turned out to be more the similarities than differences. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-31T16:42:26.042Z
I was finally organised enough to write out a worked solution in advance rather than doing it live. I think this worked well - need to do it more often! #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-28T17:35:27.556Z
Y8 #MathsToday: we extended the tables downwards, and they pretty quickly realised they could use the numbers they could see in order to evaluate these. We even managed negative fractional indices!
Honestly this way of teaching indices is a game changer. Thanks @blatherwicksam.bsky.social
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-28T16:42:53.134Z
On the hunt for right angled triangles in Y9 #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-20T21:28:27.125Z
Y8 sequences in #MathsToday. This sequence of questions was great!
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-17T18:09:30.044Z
In hindsight I would have made the numbers in Q2 easier though. They weren’t really ready for anything too non-standard by the time they got to these ones. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-17T18:08:06.324Z
Started pythagoras with Y9 in #MathsToday. I really like these questions that start with areas of squares, and gradually remove the squares until it’s just side lengths. Would highly recommend @drrowlandson.bsky.social’s blog post about this approach ponderingplanning.wordpress.com/2022/10/15/t...
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-14T19:59:16.971Z
Some #MathsToday from the second A Level Pedagogy work group meeting with 10 other teachers from Essex. The theme was using graphing technology - I particularly liked learning how to use a graphical calculator!
This task was a fun one. How would you answer? #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-12T17:24:41.152Z
Haven’t actually taught any #MathsToday myself, but I enjoyed a moment in a trainee’s lesson when a student looked at these rules for arguments and said “wait a minute, is this just logarithms?”
#ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-05T18:53:34.105Z
A hastily-written starter for Y7 that turned into a great activity. Incredibly, some of them apparently hadn’t noticed until the challenge that there was anything special about the digits in the questions! Checking who was closest meant even more practice for everyone 😄
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-05T18:39:50.432Z
Exposed a misconception about the graph of y=tan x with Y12 today, using this problem from undergroundmathematics.org/trigonometry...
Almost everyone’s first attempt to sketch a tan graph was too flat, which meant they got the first inequalities the wrong way round.
#MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-03-02T20:42:17.813Z
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-02-28T17:43:21.075Z
Possibly my favourite lesson of #MathsToday was Y10 doing their 2nd lesson on this urban regeneration project: amsp.org.uk/resource/9cd...
Today they created and then presented posters of their proposals. I’m usually allergic to group work so this was well out of my comfort zone, but they were fab!
Catriona Agg · 2025-02-28T17:34:07.895Z
In our department meeting on Wednesday, we had some time to work in groups in order to make improvements to our shared lesson resources. My group decided our #ALevelMaths lessons need more completion tables! Then in Y12 #MathsToday I got to use this one that my colleague had made.
Catriona Agg · 2025-02-28T17:14:30.924Z
I used to encourage students to highlight F or Z shapes for parallel lines questions, but today I just told Y9 to highlight the transversal. It’s an easier first step, and they were almost always then able to immediately see what to do next.
Also, I love these MathsPad questions!
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-02-28T16:56:22.343Z
I think these bar models are quite a useful way of thinking about energy questions. Your pot of energy can be split between KE and GPE, and might grow or shrink if work is being done by or against a force. I tend to get some of my signs mixed up unless I draw something! #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-02-27T18:40:50.878Z
I love Don Steward’s exercises which have a pattern in the answers. Easy to check, students quickly spot the pattern so can self-correct as they go, instant extension activity in trying to write the next question. This one was perfect practice for Y8 in #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-02-25T17:39:47.877Z
Percentages of an amount with Y7, using the excellent MathsPad percentages bar www.mathspad.co.uk/i2/teach.php...
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-02-24T18:13:32.099Z
For Y9’s last lesson on percentages, we did some mixed problems about money. I was surprised by how difficult they found these, especially Q1 - lots of them couldn’t decide whether they needed to add on the £42 or subtract it. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-02-14T17:52:04.096Z
Now 5 lessons into percentages with Y9. We are still using tables, but now with multipliers. Today we did some repeated change problems by adding extra sections to the table. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-02-12T19:47:40.357Z
Y13 have been revising recurrence relations this week, so another opportunity for looky-likeys #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-02-05T17:48:15.575Z
Started percentages with Y9 in #MathsToday. We were focusing on different types of problems that can be solved with ratio tables.
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-24T20:22:11.319Z
Very little #MathsToday for me - only Y13 were in school in order to give everyone time to mark and moderate Y11 mocks. This is a new thing for us this year (we also had a day in November, and one coming up in March for Y13 mocks) and it’s been brilliant for reducing workload and associated stress!
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-23T19:03:32.240Z
Differential equation looky-likeys for Y13. Several were caught out by Q4! #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-22T22:10:13.455Z
In Y12 #MathsToday I used this completion table (stolen off a colleague). It was such a good task. I really think having to work forwards and backwards helps to embed the routine more than just completing the procedure 4 times starting at the beginning. #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-21T17:28:25.070Z
Introducing the idea of simplifying surds to Y9. We started by talking about the difference between approximate and exact answers, and then did this task (adapted from @giftedhko.bsky.social) which worked really well.
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-21T17:15:44.382Z
Had to do an impromptu extra whiteboard activity with Y7 in #MathsToday, after a significant proportion wrote that ⅓ was bigger than ⅔. I’ve known students think ½ < ⅓ and can understand where that might come from, but today’s was a new one on me.
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-20T17:33:41.304Z
Y12 are starting to solve recurrence relations. I used this to introduce the idea of a general solution #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-17T19:27:01.070Z
Followed this up in the next lesson with 6(2x-4) divided by 2. Much higher success rate overall, but I was very pleased that a student who was absent on Wednesday made the classic mistake so we could discuss why it doesn’t work. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-16T18:45:41.221Z
In #MathsToday a student quoted Osborn’s rule as “when you see a squared sinh, you flip that sign”
Obviously only works for certain pronunciation, but I like it!
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-14T17:55:04.306Z
Y7 number lines: if I tell you the end numbers, what are the others?
They found this much more difficult than I expected - most could ‘see’ simple scales, but found it really hard to articulate a process when the numbers got more difficult.
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-10T18:32:00.367Z
Thank you to everyone who has been sharing moments from your first week back using #MathsToday. Reading so many enthusiastic posts about maths teaching has definitely helped me get through what’s felt like a long week! Happy Friday everybody 😁
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-10T17:10:23.894Z
Applications of simultaneous equations might be my favourite topic. There are just so many fun problem types! We did these Don Steward beauties in Y10 #MathsToday.
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-10T16:53:53.502Z
A Y8 student claimed to have made 20 in part (b), which made for an interesting reasoning task as the others tried to prove that it couldn’t be done. Eventually we concluded that it was only possible to get three different answers, and none of these were 20.
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-09T17:17:38.030Z
Trying to get into the habit of using more topic maps in my lessons. Here are two from #MathsToday with Y10 and Y13. #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-08T16:22:31.110Z
I started volumes of revolution with Y13 today. I’d forgotten how hard the stacked cylinders are to sketch - I definitely should have practised drawing it in advance. This version took me several attempts and still isn’t quite right. #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-07T20:57:23.179Z
Multiplying by 10s on MWB with Y7 #MathsToday. Lots of them were caught out by 1.03x10. Answers included 1.3, 10.03 and 13.3
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-06T13:39:37.194Z
If you teach maths (at any level), why not join in with #MathsToday this term? The idea is to share a little thing from your classroom - doesn’t have to be polished or original. You can join in occasionally or aim to post something every day. I’ve found it a great way to focus on the positives!
Catriona Agg · 2025-01-03T13:29:02.232Z
I have #MathsToday and #ALevelMaths pinned as feeds, and I enjoy checking those - I’ve end up seeing lots more posts about day-to-day maths teaching here than I used to on Twitter. My enthusiasm for posting lagged a bit at the end of term but I’m determined to get back into it next week!
Catriona Agg · 2024-12-12T19:24:32.361Z
A significant chunk of Y10 included the Eiffel Tower in their diagram for this question, and then couldn’t see the right angle! We had to have a chat about abstraction and what a good diagram looks like. It was also a good opportunity for a Plan Without Numbers. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-12-11T18:27:27.263Z
I didn’t have a Y12 lesson for #MathsToday because they were all at Maths Inspiration. Very jealous that they got to see cool people like @ayliean.bsky.social @sparksmaths.bsky.social without me!
Catriona Agg · 2024-12-11T18:24:07.270Z
Y13 did some hard substitutions in #MathsToday. They found this really difficult - lots of them aren’t yet fluent enough with trig identities. They know them when asked directly, but can’t always spot them in the wild, or anticipate where one could be made to usefully appear. #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-12-10T18:14:01.257Z
Trying a bit of “what if” on MWB with Y10 #MathsToday. Did a question, then I changed a number and got them to make changes to their solution, then made another change etc. It worked ok, although I should have found a better way of showing it on the board.
Catriona Agg · 2024-12-06T21:18:54.338Z
Thank you to whoever suggested this set of looky-likeys. I enjoyed using them with Y13 #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-12-03T17:20:15.791Z
Y10 are doing trig. There’s so much hidden decision-making in this topic! I really like the topic maps that @mayorofsimpleton.bsky.social has made and am trying to show these every lesson, as well as annotating examples with what I’m thinking. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-27T17:17:03.357Z
An absolute classic for Y9 #MathsToday. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them so engaged on a Wednesday afternoon.
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-27T16:59:04.672Z
Today’s looky-likeys were all trigonometric #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-26T13:46:53.809Z
Half of Y7 were missing for a PSHE event so the rest of us did some algebra tile puzzles #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-22T18:06:34.864Z
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-22T18:05:41.335Z
Today’s looky-likeys for further #ALevelMaths. The third one caught a lot of them out! #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-21T22:54:35.802Z
#MathsToday is fairly active (although often skews KS5 - it would be great to have more posts from other key stages) and is my favourite part of this community. It feels like a lot more people share lesson ideas & reflections here than I used to see on Twitter
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-21T17:10:26.617Z
While recapping inequalities with Y10 #MathsToday I realised something that I can’t believe hadn’t occurred to me before: the open/closed circles are 🔍 zooming in to show whether the line exists at that point. We could draw circles anywhere, but it’s usually only the end points we’re unsure of.
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-21T17:00:16.025Z
More integration looky-likeys with Y13 Further #ALevelMaths
A student tried to do the first one with partial fractions and was very disappointed when he realised he was back where he started 😂
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-21T11:00:26.173Z
Third lesson on #ALevelMaths normal distribution - we finally got to doing calculations! #MathsToday
I’ve set them the inverse normal worksheet for homework because we ran out of time. Hoping they’ll be able to get the links in the bottom row, but I’m expecting to have to talk about that next week.
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-20T17:45:09.999Z
I’m aware my #MathsToday posts have been very KS5 focused recently, so here’s what Y8 have been doing today.
We talked about how strange it was to turn an equation into a picture of all possible solutions, and then tried to draw some. This lesson went really well - they were loving it.
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-20T17:30:38.558Z
Second lesson on normal distribution with Y13 #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Today we mostly focused on modelling, using a card sort that they then had to write on. This part of the lesson took much longer than I expected! It was a good opportunity to talk about continuity corrections, though.
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-20T15:52:29.793Z
Vectors with Y12 #ALevelMaths (although this is technically Y13 content)
I’m trying to include more of the “See this? Think this!” stuff in my lessons this year, especially for A Level
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-19T17:45:40.116Z
I really like this way of introducing histograms - from Y12 #CoreMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-15T16:17:53.783Z
Representations of vectors with Y12. #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-14T19:53:56.996Z
Welcome! There’s lots of good maths discussion here, particularly using #MathsToday to share daily snippets from maths lessons.
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-14T19:51:31.822Z
At lunchtime today I was working through some of these problems with three Oxbridge candidates. It’s a brilliant resource. It’s also nice doing problems where they often solve them before I do! #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-14T19:26:32.134Z
First lesson on the normal distribution with Y13. I love this lesson! Lots of reasoning just using area under a curve + symmetry, rather than typing numbers into a calculator.
Q7 is my favourite. I think I should have made Q8&9 harder for this class though.
#ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-14T17:49:27.296Z
#MathsToday was the lesson I’d most been looking forward to this year. I was teaching Y13 - can anyone guess the topic?
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-13T17:36:34.138Z
Revising different possibilities for integration with Y13 #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-11T16:55:46.609Z
Odds and evens with Y9 #MathsToday. Last year they found this kind of selective factorising quite hard, so this year I’ve taught it as a separate skill before we start using it to write proofs.
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-11T15:57:37.655Z
Hi new maths teacher followers! One of the best things we do here is share little bits of our maths lessons using #MathsToday. It doesn’t have to be an incredible new idea - just a little positive snippet from your day. Please join in, I’d love to know what you’ve been up to today!
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-05T16:42:42.242Z
Started our statistics topic with Y12 #CoreMaths with a notice&wonder activity. Also a good opportunity to reuse my favourite visual for populations and samples. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-11-04T20:28:30.412Z
A Y8 student excitedly told me today that he’d found “a way to multiply any two numbers without using multiplication”. Here’s his demonstration of 8x4. I was impressed enough not to argue about whether squaring should count as multiplication! #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-10-25T15:11:54.576Z
I’m teaching fraction multiplication and division to Y8. Several of them already know a rule, so I’m trying to set them tasks that make them think a bit more about the method they’re using. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-10-23T10:40:49.285Z
Hyperbolic graphs with Y13 - a good excuse to talk to them about general sketching techniques. I think they quite enjoyed realising how much they already knew about the function.
#MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-10-21T16:22:20.566Z
Anyone want to guess what proportion of Y13 FM tried to do the third integral by parts?
#MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-10-18T12:34:31.069Z
Fractions starter for Y8 #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-10-14T20:46:14.471Z
Trying to continue my derivatives-are-paler colour scheme in today’s notes #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-10-14T19:26:20.580Z
Started writing a flowchart and then decided it would make more sense as a rectangle. Not sure Y11 were entirely convinced by it though! #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-10-10T17:32:44.908Z
I’ve always been a fan of flow charts and other word diagrams, especially for #ALevelMaths. In #MathsToday I tried to use an example alongside, which I think worked quite well.
Catriona Agg · 2024-10-07T15:51:06.026Z
Lots of factorising fun as a warm up to using standard summation formulae with Y12 #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Next lesson we’re supposed to do method of differences - does anyone have ideas for nice questions that don’t use partial fractions?
Catriona Agg · 2024-10-02T08:53:13.713Z
Loved doing these questions with Y12. Especially Q2 😍
#ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-10-01T20:21:16.746Z
My #CoreMaths Y12s were working on their first project today. We used to do this project in Y13 so I introduced lots of extra scaffolding this year - but it probably still needed more. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-30T17:42:58.871Z
Started the equations block in Y9 with a recap of what we did in Y8. Last year this topic felt like a bit of a struggle at times, so I was really pleased to see how well they remembered it. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-27T16:25:31.346Z
In Y12 #MathsToday these two activities filled the entire lesson! #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-26T21:18:04.561Z
Last year I found training Y13 to spot patterns like (derivative)e^(function) really helped in the integration topic. This year I’m trying to embed that earlier, as we cover differentiation. #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-25T14:52:05.852Z
Tried a new thing with Y12 as they’ve now finished their first topic. I got them to use their notes and the summary lists from Integral to write themselves a revision quiz. The idea is that they can use this when they come to revise to check what they remember. #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-25T14:46:49.269Z
Y12 sequences - we had lots of fun with MWB in this lesson. #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-25T08:54:00.272Z
Was talking to Y13 about why harmonic form is useful, and it occurred to me that lots of these are the same reasons we complete the square for a quadratic. So I’m tempted to start calling this Completing The Wave #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-24T14:52:33.723Z
Y7 loved this number trick! There were actual gasps when they realised they’d all got the same output #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-20T15:58:30.648Z
Another lesson of lots and lots of MWB work with Y9, who are now pretty good at finding the equation of a line from its graph 😄 #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-19T16:04:33.552Z
I’ve become a bit obsessed with the chapter on promoting graphical thinking from @susanwhitehouse.bsky.social and @mrsouthernmaths.bsky.social’s book. I reckon this one is much more accessible if your instinct is to sketch! undergroundmathematics.org/product-rule...
#MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-19T09:56:47.317Z
Trying to teach Y13 good habits for writing solutions. #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-18T16:19:14.895Z
This is always one of my favourite lessons to do with Y8. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-17T21:00:55.952Z
One of the nice things about seeing so many #MathsToday posts is realising how many of us are teaching similar topics at the same time.
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-17T15:24:04.154Z
In Y7 #MathsToday someone suggested a sequence where each term is the product of the previous two. I didn’t know a name for this type, so they suggested a few which we voted on - in the end Geonacci narrowly beat Fibometric.
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-16T15:25:05.337Z
A hastily made completion table for Y8 #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-16T14:45:27.298Z
Successfully managed to teach through a power cut with a class I’d never met before #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-15T20:29:54.151Z
I’ve been enjoying following #MathsToday and #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-13T15:49:09.273Z
I haven’t been in school today so my #MathsToday has been limited to setting cover work. I’m once again very grateful to @tlmaths.bsky.social for his incredible bank of videos - managed to find exactly what I needed for both Y12 and Y13.
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-12T16:57:24.610Z
This was another good puzzle for Y13 to practise using trig multipliers - and we derived the double angle formulae from it. Then we did some practice of the compound angle formulae, including differentiating from first principles. #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-12T16:30:37.082Z
Simplifying ratios in Y8 #MathsToday provided a nice excuse to recap prime factorisation. Most common answer to the final question here was 0:18, and a few just wrote 18 on its own. Luckily we’d learnt another method we could use to check.
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-11T16:34:35.891Z
One more #MathsToday, this time from Y12 Further #ALevelMaths. I decided to make a big thing about equating real and imaginary parts, with finding square roots and division just applications of that. I’ll show them conjugates as a shortcut for division next time.
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-11T15:39:43.562Z
Really enjoyed this afternoon’s Y9 lesson. We did lots on MWBs, including some impromptu extra practice with ratio tables. I think I’ve got better at stopping the lesson like this to practise a skill in isolation, and it has a huge impact, especially on less confident classes. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-11T08:55:02.452Z
Some different trig representations with Y13, which we could then combine to derive the compound angle formulae. I think the multipliers were a new way of thinking for a lot of them, but they work really well here and will be useful in mechanics! #MathsToday #ALevelMaths
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-10T15:18:15.830Z
Y7 #MathsToday was visual sequences. We did lots of MWB questions, including coming up with interesting questions to ask. I liked working backwards from the calculation to the pictures - you can see some of their Pattern 3s on the board.
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-10T15:12:05.217Z
I didn’t have enough exercise books for my new #CoreMaths class so needed something to keep them busy while I raided the cupboard. This turned out to be a really good question - they were able to take lots of different approaches. #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-09T16:50:42.153Z
I was pretty pleased with my attempt at explaining the chain rule today. I sometimes struggle to know how to pitch an explanation of something like this. I want them to know it’s more subtle than cancelling fractions, but don’t want to end up making it seem really difficult! #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-06T18:24:20.065Z
Had a lovely first lesson with Y12 today doing polynomial arithmetic. Only to get to the end of the day and discover a timetabling mix-up means I should have been teaching a completely different topic. Will be sad not to get to finish this!
#ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Catriona Agg · 2024-09-06T14:58:09.528Z
I’m in favour of something really short so it doesn’t take up too much of the character limit. Maybe #MathsToday? I’m aware that there are also some
Science people doing it and I don’t know whether we should have something more inclusive or separate the subjects out.