Nathan Day

@nathanday.bsky.social

1347 Followers 266 Following

Maths (and Computer Science) teacher. Task interweaver. Daydream believer. https://interwovenmaths.com New! https://classduels.com/maths/ #EduSky #UKTeaching

Title slide for Don’t Stop Interweavin’, a CPD presentation about Interweaving.
Worksheet titled “What Quadrilateral am I?” showing 21 copies of the same roughly drawn quadrilateral, each with different geometric markings such as equal sides, parallel sides, right angles, equal angles, diagonals, and bisectors. Students must ignore the inaccurate drawing, use only the markings, and identify the most specific possible quadrilateral type from: quadrilateral, kite, trapezium, parallelogram, rhombus, rectangle, or square. https://x.com/misterwootube/status/1233302933959086080?s=20
A photo of me on a train at Nottingham station.
Provisional Exam Countdown page for 2027 Edexcel GCSE Exams
Four-panel meme from a Modern Family scene. A smiling woman says, ‘I was wondering if we could have a little chat.’ A young man replies, ‘You want me to go home.’ She answers, ‘No. No, it’s the opposite of that.’ He looks confused and asks, ‘I want you to go home?’
A factor tree made from formula triangles
a formula triangle for median
An abomination. [A formula triangle for Capture-Recapture]
A selection of 4 questions involving the Harmonic Mean in different contexts.
A selection of 6 questions using proportional reasoning in different contexts with the same numbers. A prompt saying 'Which is the odd one out?'
A photo of me and Karen in a grotto/fernery.
A three-circle Venn diagram labelled A, B, and C inside a rectangle. Each region represents inequalities with certain properties: • A: the solution set is a subset of x \leq 1. • B: the solution set is of the form a \leq x \leq b. • C: the inequality is satisfied by x = 4. Below the diagram is a set of numbered inequalities in boxes. The task is to place each inequality into the correct region of the Venn diagram according to the properties of its solution set. https://undergroundmathematics.org/quadratics/inequalities-for-some-occasions
"Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing." https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
A maths worksheet titled “Simultaneous Equations & Points of Intersection.” It shows a grid where different pairs of equations intersect, and the task is to fill in the correct intersection points from a list of given coordinates. Some boxes are shaded and students must explain how many intersection points there are, without calculating the coordinates.
Maths question titled ‘Suggest possible equations for the graphs on the diagram. Generalise your answer.’ The diagram shows two parabolas: one opening upwards and one opening downwards. They touch at a single point above the x-axis, forming a point of tangency. The task is to suggest equations for these parabolas and to generalise the form of such equations.
“Maths question titled ‘Which equation matches which graph?’ On the left, five quadratic equations are listed: (1) y = 6x – 3x² – 3, (2) y = x² – 2x + 5, (3) y = x² – 2x – 3, (4) y = 2x – x² + 3, (5) y = 3x² – 6x + 3. On the right, five parabolas are drawn on a coordinate grid, some opening upwards and some downwards, intersecting around the origin. The task is to match each equation to its corresponding parabola and explain the reasoning.”
A screenshot of the following text: In case you want to do something a bit different, here's some other Mathematical things you can do over the Summer: 1) Watch some Mathematical YouTube videos. I'd suggest: Ayliean - https://www.youtube.com/@Ayliean/videos Tibees - https://www.youtube.com/@tibees/videos Ellie Sleightholm - https://www.youtube.com/@EllieSleightholm/videos 2) Do some Mathematical art. Lots of ideas here: https://www.artfulmaths.com/blog 3) Play a Mathematical game. I strongly recommend the Sumaze games (https://www.mei.org.uk/sumaze/) and Euclidea (https://www.euclidea.xyz/) 4) Read a Mathematical book. Some good suggestions here: https://nrich.maths.org/recommended-books 5) Watch a Mathematical film/documentary. I'd suggest: Hidden Figures, The Man Who Knew Infinity, or Fermat's Last Theorem (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074rxx/horizon-19951996-fermats-last-theorem), 6) Have a go at some Mathematical puzzles. https://nrich.maths.org/students/secondary 7) Explore Mathigon. There's lots of really cool stuff on there. https://mathigon.org/activities 8) Sign up to Parallel and have a go at some of the Parallelograms puzzles: https://parallel.org.uk/parallelograms?latest=1 9) Create some Desmos art: https://www.desmos.com/art
A screenshot of the end screen to a game of Duelling Mathematicians, showing the new Duel Statistics pop-up.
A screenshot of a website showing grade boundaries for different Maths and Further Maths papers.
Draw an island where the amount of beach is less than the perimeter of the land.
Draw: An example of an island. Something that is almost an Island. Something that is definitely not an island.
Islands are made up of pieces of land completely surrounded by beaches. This island has 28 km? of land, and 40 km? of beach. What questions could you ask about islands?
My Top-Five Four-Digit Numbers https://mathsbot.com/cpdMenu
Which is larger 3n or n+3? https://www.ncetm.org.uk/media/jaxntuce/iccams-handbook-1.pdf
Equivalent Fractions Checkpoint https://www.ncetm.org.uk/classroom-resources/checkpoints/
Pythagoras Pile Up https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/pythagoras-pile-up-11270615
Paper Clip from Illustrative Mathematics https://tasks.illustrativemathematics.org/content-standards/tasks/415
Gradient Match from Underground Maths https://undergroundmathematics.org/introducing-calculus/gradient-match
Teddy Bear from Underground Maths https://undergroundmathematics.org/circles/teddy-bear
Mental Mathemagician by YummyMath
Laws of Exponents on Open Middle https://www.openmiddle.com/laws-of-exponents/
NRICH's Shape Times Shape https://nrich.maths.org/sites/default/files/thumbnails/content-id-5714-ShapeTimesShapeSheet.pdf
MEI Integral's Transforming Graphs https://mei.org.uk/app/uploads/2021/09/07-graphs-and-transformations-res.pdf
Representing Data Match-up from the Standards Unit https://www.stem.org.uk/system/files/elibrary-resources/legacy_files_migrated/6515-S5.pdf
1089, as described in the Complete Maths Problem Solving Booklet: https://completemaths.com/images/free%20resources/Complete-Mathematics-Problem-Solving-BookletTeacher-Notes.pdf
nrich's Cryptarithms https://nrich.maths.org/problems/cryptarithms
More/Same/Less Areas and Perimeters by John Mason http://www.pmtheta.com/more-or-less-grids.html
Percentage Change by Colin Foster https://www.foster77.co.uk/Percentage%20Change%20TASK%20SHEET.pdf
Small Data Set Averages Problems by Don Steward https://donsteward.blogspot.com/2017/08/small-data-set-average-problems.html
An A-Level Maths Cryptic Crossword grid.
A task featuring 12 3D shapes, all of which have volume 1 litre and missing lengths to be found.
A series of maths questions featuring cuboids with the same volumes/surface areas, allowing you to form and solve equations to find missing lengths.
That image of Mark Hamill edited so that the background is the moon of Endor and he looks like he's flying through the forest on a tricycle with square wheels!
Always? Sometimes? Never? x^2 + Ax + B = (x+c)^2+8 1. C is less than A. 2. The vertex has an x-coordinate of 8. 3. B is less than A. 4. If C is an integer, so is A. 5. If A is an integer, so is B. 6. B is greater than 8. 7. If you know B, you can work out A and C. 8. The quadratic has two roots. 9. The minimum value of the quadratic is 8. 10. If you know A, you can work out B and C.
The probability generating function for the total.
A selection of Maths questions featuring Cuisenaire rods.
René invests £1000 in a savings account for two years. The savings account pays interest at a fixed rate, compounded annually, but also gives a £1 loyalty bonus at the end of the second year. The total amount of interest René receives in the second year is 7% bigger than in the first year. Find the two possible interest rates for the account.
The masses of 28 parcels are represented in the histogram. Find x. An image of a histogram with: • the first bar covering 0 < m < 3 kg and with frequency density 2; • the second bar covering 3 < m < 7 kg with frequency density 1; • the third bar covers 7 < m < x kg with frequency density x
A right-angled triangle with a horizontal hypotenuse of length 7 and a height of sqrt(10). x is labelled as the distance from where the height meets the hypotenuse to the corner of the triange. The question says to find x.
A bag contains 𝑥 counters. Three of the counters are green. Two of the counters are red. The rest of the counters are blue. Pete takes a counter from the bag and replaces it. Liza then also takes a counter from the bag. Find an expression for the probability that Pete’s counter was blue and Liza’s counter wasn’t red.
A multiplication grid with numbers being shaded in the sequence 18, 10, 4, 6, 6, 4, 10, 18, 28, 40,...
The masses of 28 parcels are represented in the histogram. Find x. An image of a histogram with: • the first bar covering 0 < m < 3 kg and with frequency density 2; • the second bar covering 3 < m < 7 kg with frequency density 1; • the third bar covers 7 < m < x kg with frequency density x
My university lecture notes with a quote highlighted saying: 'The sequence diverges if it doesn't converge.'
A satirical rewriting of Pearson's statement regarding issues regarding A Level Maths Paper 2 to be about logging in to ActiveLearn: "I am writing to you as we appreciate that there have been some questions raised about the presence of two different login screens on the Pearson ActiveLearn platform on Sunday 15 June. I am sorry for any confusion this may have caused to you and your students. I want to reassure you that all users interacted with the correct, intended version of the login screen for this platform. As outlined in our message of 13 June, we advised that, on this occasion, the identifiers associated with the standard login and an alternative login pathway were different. Each screen corresponded to a valid, approved access route. Both the standard and alternate versions were designed to meet our platform specifications and underwent the same rigorous internal processes to ensure they fully met our quality standards. Looking ahead, user metrics and access thresholds will be reviewed separately for both experiences, in order to fairly reflect any small differences in their relative accessibility, and to ensure no user was advantaged or disadvantaged by the version they encountered. If you have any concerns, or wish to discuss this further, please do contact us using our support portal and we’ll be pleased to help you."