Our new KS3 scheme of work follows the utterly brilliant Kangaroo Maths scheme. For me, Kenny and his pouch are right up there with the miracle workers at MAC Cosmetics and the day that David Beckham decided to join Instagram. What I love about Kenny and his schemes of work is that they fit so well with life pre and post levels and build in so many opportunities for stretch and challenge (and not only for the best mathematicians).
One such example is taken from the Year 7 scheme of work. Students have first covered factors, multiples and primes and now are looking at ordering fractions. I think it is a stroke of genius that this runs perfectly into Egyptian fractions and the invaluable challenge and real life application it provides.
As students walked into the room to the dulcet tones of The Bangles 'walking like an Egyptian' (too much?) students first wrote their names using hieroglyphics which allowed a rich discussion about writing from left to right or right to left and whether the Arab world should apply the same principles when working with BIDMAS. We also drew upon the beauty of the international teaching scene as two Egyptian students went on to describe what it was like in Egypt and what their grandparents' grandparents said life was like there many years ago. We then of course spent the rest of the lesson looking at unit fractions, equivalent fractions and spotting patterns between factors and multiples and what types of division sums would give the biggest denominators.
I think the best part of this lesson was that students believed this satisfied the common "is this going to be a fun lesson?" plea and all left having made progress and with all but two students contributing to student led activities.
One such example is taken from the Year 7 scheme of work. Students have first covered factors, multiples and primes and now are looking at ordering fractions. I think it is a stroke of genius that this runs perfectly into Egyptian fractions and the invaluable challenge and real life application it provides.
As students walked into the room to the dulcet tones of The Bangles 'walking like an Egyptian' (too much?) students first wrote their names using hieroglyphics which allowed a rich discussion about writing from left to right or right to left and whether the Arab world should apply the same principles when working with BIDMAS. We also drew upon the beauty of the international teaching scene as two Egyptian students went on to describe what it was like in Egypt and what their grandparents' grandparents said life was like there many years ago. We then of course spent the rest of the lesson looking at unit fractions, equivalent fractions and spotting patterns between factors and multiples and what types of division sums would give the biggest denominators.
I think the best part of this lesson was that students believed this satisfied the common "is this going to be a fun lesson?" plea and all left having made progress and with all but two students contributing to student led activities.