#mathsconf40

Mathsconf40 took place in Derby yesterday. I thought it might be helpful to write a quick post to update my readers on some stuff I learnt.

I enjoyed Joe Berwick's (@berwickmaths) session on teaching statistics at A level. My degree was in Statistics at UCL (I actually did SORMS, which is similar to MORSE at Warwick - a popular course amongst our Year 13s) so I teach a lot of statistics, including FS1. Further Statistics 1 is a great choice of module for A Level Further Maths. It's particularly beneficial to students wanting to study economics at university (a popular choice) and numerous other courses. And there are many great career options for keen statisticians, such as Data Science and Actuarial Science. Our students who have studied GCSE Statistics (which they don't love) are always pleasantly surprised that they enjoy FS1. Joe also talked about the benefits of teaching FS2 - students get to learn confidence intervals which feature in many university courses. 

The majority of Joe's talk was on teaching the statistics content of A Level Maths. He talked about how the large data set includes the Great Storm of 1987 - I remember this very well (I was a very scared 6 year old living in an area with lots of big oak trees, many of which fell down). Coincidentally I'm telling my Year 12s about this tomorrow, and sharing some photos of me in the aftermath of the storm (in the first photo I'm with my mum and brother - we took these after the roads had been cleared of trees).

Joe talked about how he teaches correlation hypothesis testing first, before he teaches normal and binomial hypothesis testing. This gave me something to think about. He has very helpfully shared some of his lessons slides on berwickmaths.com. Joe made a lot of good points about things that I too have noticed - for example, that the Edexcel textbook has a single exercise on Discrete Random Variables but it comes up all the time in exams, and the questions are very different from those in the textbook (for example they include questions on the sum of two DRVs). I noticed this too and did a lesson on it with my Year 13s last week. I wasn't aware that OCR is a great place to get DRV questions for modelling and practice (see the OCR Paper 2s here - full of great questions that I can use in my Year 13 revision lessons in the next three weeks).

In the second session of the day I presented on how we engage and challenge Key Stage 3 mathematicians at my school. I think our strong GSCE results and the high uptake of our maths GCSE option (last term over one third of Year 9 students chose our course - which I blogged about here) are both down to what we do at Key Stage 3. I spoke about our curriculum, department professional development, and our assessment strategy. In particular I'm interested in research that suggests some students aren't exposed to 'novel' maths in Year 7, and I showed examples of what 'novel' might look like.

In the next session there were a number of fantastic talks on offer but I was still buzzing from running a session so I took the opportunity to have a break and catch up with my mate Dr Ed Southall. I also picked up some freebies from the exhibitors and enjoyed my bag of tuck from Rob Smith's excellent tuck shop. I learnt about the Unit Award Scheme offered by AQA which is great for schools who manage to teach students part of the L2 Further Maths course but not enough for them to enter the full exam.

Did you know that Ed is co-chair of the BCME 10 committee? BCME (British Congress of Mathematics Education) is a big research-based residential maths education conference, attended by lots of academics. I'm considering presenting at BCME this October, but only if lots of teachers attend the conference as my presentations always written for teachers. I had a great time at BCME 9 back in 2018 (blog post here) when I was lucky enough to receive a bursary. Teachers - I urge you to sign up to either speak or attend - the website is bcme.co.uk. 

After lunch I went to Matt Man's (@mr-man-maths) session on international exam papers. Matt was responsible for providing me with 'officially the most helpful bit of information I have ever picked up at a mathsconf' (see my post about mathsconf37) which was to explore different specifications on ExamWizard to find fresh banks of questions (I have recently found International A level very helpful for my Further Maths lesson planning). In Matt's session yesterday he talked about a range of qualifications and we had the opportunity to try some questions from those qualifications. 

Finally I went to Ed Southall's workshop on problem solving where he talked about what problem solving is (this will feature heavily in maths curriculum reform in the next few years). We also had a go at some different types of problems. This is part of the work Ed does at Maths Horizons which you can read about here. 

I missed Tim Dolan's (@timdolan) session on online maths tools. I often use online tools for demonstrating concepts - for example my daughter was practising for the Junior Maths Challenge last week and there was a question on rotational symmetry. She didn't know what that was so I used MathsPad's rotational symmetry tool (login required) to explain it to her. I also use a lot of animations in my teaching (gifs inserted into PowerPoints), for example when teaching constructions. I love it that Tim has collated loads of great online tools in one place on his new website mathsindex.uk. Tim invites teachers to contribute ideas for additions to the website. 

I had a nice train journey home with Megan Guinan and Jamie Frost. It was a great day overall, and it was delightful to see that there were many teachers attending mathsconf for the first time. As always, the best part was the networking, chatting about maths teaching, and catching up with old friends. Thank you to La Salle for running the conference and to City of Derby Academy for hosting it. Attendees of the conference will be able to access all the PowerPoints when La Salle shares the link in a few days. In the meantime, I'm always happy to share my schemes of work and/or assessments - just email me. See you at the next one!

5 Maths Gems #197

Welcome to my 197^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Dr Austin A Level Revision
It's always great to see new Dr Austin resources. Latest additions include a Harder Reflections Practice Grid and a Negative Enlargements Practice Grid, plus some new A level resources on Logs, Hyperbolics and Polar Coordinates. An A Level Revision section has also been added, featuring revision grids for Year 12 and Year 13.

2. New Online Tools
I've seen a number of excellent new online tools recently:

• Vectorama - I featured Neil Kendall's free resource Graphiti in Gems 196, and now he has published Vectorama which is designed to help teach vectors, matrices and transformations in 2D and 3D. It is helpful for everything from introducing the basics of matrix transformations to teaching eigenvectors in Year 13 Further Maths. Worksheets have also been provided so students can investigate the concepts themselves. This is a fantastic tool - thank you Neil!

• Reflections - Callum Adamson created a tool for modelling reflections in Gemini (download the file and it will run in your browser). You can use the shapes in the drop down menu or upload pdf versions of slides or worksheets and use an interactive mirror on top. In the picture below you can see I've uploaded a page from an AQA topic test and it looks very cool.

• Slide Creator - @TickTockMaths made a Slide Creator which is designed to create maths lessons quickly. Lessons can easily feature example problem pairs, interactivity, fill in the blanks and so on, all using pre-built templates. Check out some examples of lessons: area of a circle, assigning probabilities and factorising quadratics (open these on desktop, not a mobile).

3. A Level Resources
Recently I've seen some new A level resources that are worth sharing.

@andrewmaths1 has been tweeting a series of A level questions on X (thread here).

I like this scaffolded logs resource from @mrlevmaths.bsky.social.

And this great parametrics resource from ‪@karenshancock.bsky.social‬.

Finally, this isn't new but I hadn't seen it before so thought it might be useful to share. Whilst looking for an A level resource online I found the website mathematicswales.com. It features A level questions by topic - always helpful!

4. Mr Barton Maths
In Gems 195 I wrote about some of the fantastic new features on mrbartonmaths.com. Since then even more features have been added so do spend some time exploring it. For example, there's a problem solving section with loads of fantastic lesson ideas.

You can choose a topic and see suggestions for rich tasks and questions that get students thinking.

5. GCSE Revision

We always see a flurry of new Paper 1s being shared at this time of year - it's really helpful to have access to new GCSE resources that our students haven't seen before. It's important to be clear with students that it's not possible to guess what will appear on GCSE Paper 1 this summer so while these papers are great for practice, they can not be considered 'predictions' (though after Paper 1 there is an opportunity to narrow down the topics and attempt to guess what might come up in Papers 2 and 3). Here are the new (free) Paper 1s I've seen:

• 1st Class Maths (Edexcel Paper 1 H and F are already published and AQA is coming soon).
• Hannah Kettle
• Bennett Maths
• New website luckymaths.co.uk has Foundation practice papers 

If you're looking for good quality GCSE revision resources there are loads of them on my GCSE Revision Page - I've added a link to this page at the top right of my blog so you can access it quickly at this time of year. It includes some resources I've made myself including revision mats, the original breakfast warm ups, and the revision quiz I made last year which I'm looking forward to using again (see this post). 

Update

March was a busy time at school, the highlight being our annual Maths Week. This involves a treasure hunt, a daily puzzle, a Sparx contest and an assembly about a mathematician (this year I did it on Turing). 

We are always delighted when we see students attempting to solve the daily puzzle as soon as they arrive at school, and students crowded around the maths office at break eagerly discussing their ideas. We find it difficult to find suitable puzzles for all year groups - this year we took some of them from this helpful resource. 

Delivering assemblies is nerve-racking enough, but to add extra pressure I had a researcher from the Department for Education observing me this year. My school was selected as one of sixteen schools nationally recognised for high engagement, attainment and attendance, so we are part of their research on 'how schools foster belonging'. It was convenient that they happened to conduct this research during Maths Week, which is one of the best house events in my school's calendar.

Did you see the latest comment on my Words to Avoid post? It made me laugh.

I'm very much looking forward to the MEI Conference in July. Bookings are now open. I highly recommend this conference - it's always brilliant.

I'm also looking forward to #mathsconf40. I'm concerned it's going to be a particularly exhausting way to start the busiest half term of the year (I have a Parents Evening on the Thursday and a trip to Derby for mathsconf on the Friday night, both at the end of six period days!) but at least there's a Bank Holiday a couple of weeks later to aid recovery. It's always good to see everyone at mathsconfs, and it looks like there's an interesting range of talks on offer. I've written a new workshop on 'Challenging and Engaging Key Stage 3 Mathematicians' which I'm looking forward to sharing. I hope to see you there!

5 Maths Gems #196

Welcome to my 196^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Make it Full Marks

@acutelearning shared a great resource called 'Aiming for A*: Make it full marks'. This is an A level resource made using AQA papers but is relevant for other exam boards too. 

In this resource students are presented with partially correct answers. Each answer is worth some or most of the marks. However, in each case there's at least one error or missing component that means the answer will not receive full marks. Students have to find the error and correct the answer to make it full marks. This is a lovely revision resource to use in a summer term lesson with A level mathematicians. 

You can access the resource here and the answers are here. 

@acutelearning has also shared some other useful resources:

• hypothesis testing revision
• alternating exercises (covering topics from KS3/4/5) - with PPT and answers

2. Mr Hardy Maths
@jim-hardy has shared his website mrhardymaths.co.uk which contains question banks for GCSE, A Level and A Level Further Maths. There's a search box to help you find relevant questions:

Opening one of the topics let you practice this skill on screen with students:

Clicking print gives you a worksheet with answers:

3. Graphiti
Maths teacher Neil Kendall has developed a free resource Graphiti to easily demonstrate calculus concepts graphically. As well as functioning like Desmos you can very easily use interactive tangents and normals, calculate definite integrals, illustrate area between two curves and show numerical integration interactively - switching between trapezium, Simpsons and mid-ordinate methods. It will work with cartesian (implicit and explicit) as well as polar and parametric equations. It works on desktop, mobile and tablet devices.

Here's a short video demonstrating many of its features:

4. Mr Chapman Maths

@dalechapman has shared a number of new features on his website mrchapmanmaths.com. He's made Large Data Set Flashcards for the Edexcel Large Data Set. This is a fantastic revision resource for students studying Edexcel A level maths.

There's also a fun game called Target 1000. You randomly generate a digit and place it in the column addition with a target of 1000. Have a go!

There are also a lot of resources on this website for teaching Decision Maths.

5. Dr Austin Resources
@draustinmaths continues to share fantastic new resources. Recent additions include Hyperbolic Functions for Further Maths, Exponentials and Logs and 3D Vectors for A Level Maths, and Volume and Surface Area of Compound Shapes.

Update

Calculators

I've enjoyed playing with the new Casio Classwiz+ which is a massive improvement on the previous model. The brilliant company Science Studio very kindly sent me both a 85 and 991, engraved with my name, and Casio sent me one too. What lovely people. I've been using my old White 991EX since 2016 and my dependence on the SD button has made me reluctant to transition to the 991CW. But now I have a 991CW+ I've finally stopped using the old white model. The 991CW+ is my new first choice calculator. 

MathsPad

Have you seen the latest update from MathsPad? As well as new resources in their 'Building Blocks' series, which are aimed at students with big gaps in foundational knowledge, they've also started a new collection of cover resources. These are free to access. Also, Nicola has written a useful explanation of the logistics of using booklets in lessons.

Exercise Books

A teacher on Bluesky asked a question about treasury tagging books and I made a quick video for her (I recorded it in a rush before school, so it's not the best thing I've made! Please don't judge...!). In this video I show the layout of our A4+ exercise books and the way we set up our treasury tags. I know a lot of teachers complain that their exercise books are a mess so you might be interested in what we do. 

Conferences

You may have seen that mathsconf40 has been announced for Saturday 18th April. This is a first - mathsconfs have always taken place in March, June and October. A mathsconf at the start of the summer term has taken me by surprise. It's great to see that these conferences are still running. It looks like some people will be staying at the Premier Inn Derby South but for some reason that's £111 for a room so I'm not quite sure what to do about that - it takes the cost to well over £200 for train fare and hotels. I remember when I used to spend £40 on conference hotel rooms! Those were the days.

The MEI Conference is now taking bookings. This takes place in term time (Thursday 2nd - Friday 3rd July) but it's after exams when lots of teachers have gained time so hopefully doesn't involve missing too many lessons. I recommend asking your school to fund your attendance at this - there's no harm in asking! Schools often have untapped CPD budgets. It's a brilliant conference that I highly recommend. 

I attended an Inset Day last week where I went to three excellent sessions: a workshop on the CG100 which was delivered by Simon May from Casio, a workshop on A level marking delivered by Isobel Oakley from Pearson, and a workshop on university admissions tests delivered by Alexandra Hewitt from MEI. I've been to so many conference in the last twelve years it's sometimes hard for me to find sessions that are relevant and useful that I haven't been to before, but on this occasion all three workshops were genuinely helpful. Alexandra said something in her session that really struck me - she talked about who we should encourage to do maths degrees and it occurred to me that I only think of maths degrees as being suitable for the very best mathematicians. But a student could be on a Grade B or C in A level maths and it's their strongest or favourite subject, and maybe one day they'd make an excellent maths teacher. These are the students that I should be encouraging to take a maths degree. I don't do enough of this. This gave me something to think about.

Here's a photo of part of my team on the way home from our post-conference drinks. There were eight of us earlier in the day but we forgot to take a picture. I love my team - a group of absolute legends who support each other every day and work incredibly hard to make sure every child succeeds. 

I wish all of my readers a restful half term break.

5 Maths Gems #195

Welcome to my 195^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. Maths Rocket

gcsemathsrocket.co.uk is a new website packed full of useful resources. 

There are over one hundred maths worksheets with answers and accompanying videos. For an example, check out this vectors worksheet. I really like the detailed atomisation of skills. There's everything from getting the direction of arrows right to simple vector routes to a gradual introduction of midpoints. There are lots of questions on each individual skill (extracts are shown below) before it's all brought together at the end in full exam questions. I haven't seen this topic broken down so carefully before. 

Choose any topic and you'll find a similar approach. For example, check out the range of different question types on the Sine Rule worksheet and look at the amount of practice available in the Box Plots worksheet. I think these are great and when I get time I'll add them to my resource libraries.

In addition to the large collection of worksheets, there's a Questions Database for Edexcel GCSE Maths. It looks similar to the very user-friendly website Examq.co.uk which I featured in Gems 158, but it's slightly different in that it takes you directly to a page in an exam paper.

 

There are also slides and YouTube videos which are designed to follow an 'I do, You do' structure to ensure students don't just passively watch the videos but get plenty of practice throughout. 

2. Mr Barton Maths
Craig Barton has updated his free website mrbartonmaths.com with some new features.

Super 8s are designed for consolidation practice of a current topic or for retrieval practice of previously taught skills. It's very easy to select topics. Teachers can project the eight questions on the board in full-screen mode, or print a one page worksheet. Students can also use the tool directly on their phone.

The Exam Papers page provides step-by-step worked solutions for SATs, GCSE, AQA Level 2 Further Maths and A Level questions. Each solution clearly explains the method, and the idea is students use this page independently when revising. If they get stuck on a question when revising, looking at a full worked solution is way more helpful than looking at a mark scheme.

There's also a Games section - some of my Year 7s were enjoying these games during a snowy lunchtime last week.

And there are some great little teacher tools like equipment trackers and noise monitors. 

3. AI and GCSE Stats

Thank you to @harryzafar for sharing two blog posts about how he uses AI to make maths resources. I know lots of my readers are interested in developments in AI and how they relate to maths resourcing so I recommend checking out what Harry has been doing:

• Using Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Mathematics Resources
• Using Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Mathematics Resources: Checks for Understanding

Harry has used AI tools to create some more resources to add to his GCSE Statistics collection at mathboardwalk.com. 

4. Hannah Kettle

Hannah Kettle has been busy making her website easier to navigate. There are lots of useful GCSE Maths resources at hannahkettlemaths.co.uk.

5. I Do You Do Exam Papers

Thank you to Muhammed Balal for emailing me about this simple idea - it seems obvious but I haven't seen it done before. He has taken exam papers and associated shadow papers produced by exam boards, and compiled them into combined 'I do, you do' papers. The idea is that the teacher models a question and then the student completes a very similar question on the next page, and this continues the whole way through the exam paper. This would be a great way to practise exam technique, with the teacher modelling how to set out workings and the students getting plenty of practice throughout the lesson. Muhammed has made papers for GCSE (both AQA and Edexcel) and A level, and GCSE Statistics. He has shared them at mathswalkthrough.co.uk.

Update

Two gems posts in quick succession! This never happens. Social Media has been very quiet over the last year so I struggle to find materials for gems posts these days. But a little flurry of activity online and in my inbox at the end of the Christmas holidays meant that I could write another Gems post only two weeks after posting Gems 194.

What this does mean is I have no new personal news to report, other than the fact it was my birthday last week, and my age is now a multiple of both three and five. Happy Birthday to me! My husband got me a mini Galton Board for my desk which I love showing to students.

My school has a maths teacher job vacancy going live imminently. Please get in touch if you're interested and want more information. We're based in South London. We need someone who can teach Key Stage 3 to Key Stage 5 (with a statistics preference at Key Stage 5). We're fully staffed with a very happy maths department, but we're increasing our staff numbers next year so we can meet the high demand for A level maths.

Did you see the news that Casio has tweaked their Classwiz calculators so they are essentially bringing back the much-missed SD button? I believe it's still labelled as the Format button, but pressing it once will automatically switch between fraction and decimal like SD used to do (and pressing shift + format will bring up the format menu). The new calculator model is the Classwiz+ - you can read more about it here.

At my school we have Year 11 mocks coming up in a couple of weeks. We've nearly finished teaching all the content of the specification and in preparation for these mock exams we will be providing our students with the 'Things to Memorise' resources that I made this time last year and shared in Gems 184.  If you didn't see this at the time, you may find it helpful. You can download these for both Higher and Foundation tier (including editable versions) here for your Year 11 students. Last year we handed them out before mocks and I was surprised to see students still clutching onto them on the morning of the actual Maths GCSE exams in May and June. 

Also, in case you haven't seen this before, it's worth knowing that @1stclassmaths has updated his GCSE Topic Appearance page. Although we can't use topic frequency to predict what will be in this summer's exams (you could say that topics that rarely come up are due an appearance, or you could say that topics that rarely come up are unlikely to come up... who knows), students always find this page fascinating so it's worth showing to your Year 11s.

5 Maths Gems #194

Welcome to my 194^th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. 1st Class Maths 

It's great to see more A level resources from 1st Class Maths. There's now a full collection of excellent exam style questions for the statistics content of AS level maths, and now he's started to add mechanics exam style questions too. Unlike collections of exam questions on other websites which are often just made using ExamWizard, these questions are totally original and carefully thought through, meaning this is an excellent resource for use in lessons or for homework or revision.

I've added these to my Mechanics resource library. 

Also check out the accompanying videos which are very high quality and well explained as always.

2. Dr Austin

Thank you to Dr Austin for continuing to add incredibly useful resources to her website. Recent additions include multi-step trigonometry problems and a Pythagoras Pile Up.

There are also some new resources for congruency proofs, a topic that has always been under resourced. 

Dr Austin also continues to grow her A level collection. Recent additions include resources for binomial expansions and trigonometry.

3. Circle Theorems

Dan Lewis' post on Bluesky about angles in the same segment got me thinking about how I don't provide enough non-examples when teaching circle theorems (see Task 2 below). 

4. M4TH5
The website m4th5.co.uk has been redesigned. It features a number of free resources including a free and easy to use calculator emulator, interactive A level maths flashcards, an AS Further Maths Starter generator and a 100-mark A level exam paper with worked solutions (which is free, but only if you create an account). 

5. RISPs
Many of you will already be familiar with Jonny Griffiths' RISPs - a collection of open-ended investigative activities aimed at A level students. Jonny has updated the collection and created a new RISPs eBook which can be accessed at risps.co.uk. Thank you Jonny!

Update

TMUA

I have a number of students taking TMUA in January so am very grateful for the resources that have been shared for this. @andrewmaths1 has posted an excellent set of questions in a blog post and @etzsmc has shared another set of TMUA notes and exercises on TES: this time for TMUA Paper 2 on Logic and Proof. 

Conference Dates

Complete Maths conference dates for 2026 have been published. #mathsconf40 is on 7th March in the South, #mathsconf41 is on 6th June in the Midlands and #mathsconf42 is on 17th October in the North. As always, I'll attempt to attend all three if I can afford to.

The MEI Conference takes place on 2nd and 3rd July 2026 at Keele University. I'm speaking on the Friday so will be there then, and may also attend on the Thursday, depending on my timetable and school commitments. If I can't get the Thursday off school then I will still endeavour to attend the conference dinner on the Thursday night (a free bar sponsored by Casio is not to be missed!) Have I mentioned that I absolutely love the MEI Conference? I highly recommend it.

Subject Associations
No doubt you're aware that the long-awaited merger of maths subject associations has now happened and the Association for Mathematics in Education (AMiE) has been born. Congratulations and well done to everyone involved in this lengthy process. It's going to be great to have a single body representing maths teachers in the UK.

News from me

My latest post 'Things I assumed you knew' went down well, with a lot of readers getting in touch to say that they learnt something new from it (particularly the quick way of using equation editor).

I'm looking forward to reading Tom Briggs' book 'The Mathematicians' Library: The Books That Unlocked The Power Of Numbers' which my husband kindly bought me for Christmas. 

Thank you to Jamie Frost for hosting drinks at his house followed by a meal at his local pub just before Christmas. As always it was lovely to catch up with this brilliant bunch of maths teachers.

Finally, I'll leave you with this brilliant 3D printed tool for drawing trig graphs from @thechalkface.bsky.social.

Happy New Year everyone! All the best for 2026.