It’s grim, it’s slow, everything’s badly designed and nothing really works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And I wouldn’t change it for the world, because I’m an abject bloody idiot and I hate myself, and this is what I deserve: to be sentenced to Windows for life. [...]
Download a JQZ file with 20 question MCQ on four functions, number words, and place notation.
Link to Web page that displays a random selection of 10 of the 20 questions.
There is a time limit of 20 minutes on the 10 questions just so my Numeracy students can get used to working against the clock. They [...]
Download a PDF version of a presentation on measurements with photos produced especially
Download a pdf with some group activities about measurement. This set of activities is designed to get people actually measuring and moving around the class. Along the way, they will confront skills such as recording data, making tables to show results, working with [...]
Download a one side handout with some estimation and BODMAS examples used for homework.
This one side homework was produced by copying and pasting from other worksheets I have written over the last few years. Definitely a 20 minute task. We use estimation questions as a way for students to show understanding of the sequence of [...]
Polish tea bags and Walker Evans
Just a PDF with 40 four function questions with numerical answers. You can never have enough examples. This was used as a class exercise as individual work, and I had useful conversations with individual students about concrete examples. Issues around columns, place notation &c as usual.
A little bit of subtraction, some short and long multiplication [...]
“I believe in adequate defence at the coastline and nothing else.”
War Is Just a Racket. Composed by Kyle Gann; performed by Sarah Cahill. The soldier speaks. Good luck chaps.
“As we entered Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, a perfect fifth was already ringing on the organ. Little by little Charlemagne added notes, held down with little wooden splints, and pulled out additional organ stops to thicken the roar of sound. Finally he plunged onto the keyboard with both forearms, and, with overtones at maximum [...]
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“Researchers asked 3,000 11 to 14-year- olds in England to sit maths exams taken by pupils in 1976, and compared their scores with the earlier results. Analysis suggested there was little difference between the two generations.” BBC News article (no attribution)
What I noticed about this research is the way ‘maths’ is assumed to have some [...]
“The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation before them. That’s because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text. Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom—life writing, as [...]