An excellent book for finding interesting maths challenges for students is Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities.  They can be used for setting tasks that combine areas of maths knowledge and they also highlight to students that maths questions aren’t solved in seconds but require devising strategies to solve them.  They are superb for developing deeper thinking skills.

One task in the book is called New Merology originally developed by Lee Sallows.  The interactive whiteboard resource here supports demonstrating this puzzle to students.    The challenge is to find a unique value for each of the letters in the spellings  of the words zero to twelve so  that when added up they equal the value of the word in which they are in.  So the number chosen for the letter “O” added to the number chosen for the letter “N” added to the letter chosen for the letter “E” must add up to 1.  Of course the letters appear in other words so by picking a value for “N” you also have an impact on the sum of the letters in “T+E+N”. 

The resource allows you to chose a letter then select its value by dragging the red marker across the top. If any of the values you have chosen are duplicated a warning will show.  The resource will also sum the values for each word.  While this resource could be used to aid in the solving of the problem a more effective use is to just use it to demonstrate the problem to the class and to use it to discuss different approaches to the problem as it avoids lengthy recalculations when a value is changed.  The student’s maths skills will be improved more if they work at the puzzle manually.  This puzzle will then give them a practical application for their skills in adding negative numbers as well as the deeper thinking skills involved.  A printable resource is also available below to give a structure to the puzzle.  It may be useful to laminate the print out so that students can use non-permanent markers to to write with and rub out as they change values.

The solution will not be included here as it is available in the book  Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities
and the intention here isn’t to take anything away from the book but rather support its use in the classroom.  The range of values used in the solution is from -7 to 11 as shown in the resource.

Go to interactive whiteboard resource.

Get printable resource.

Report any problems in the comments.  Also, do you find resources such as this interesting  or are the more usual teaching resources more useful?

[Read more →]

 An interactive whiteboard resource to accompany a puzzle published in an old book by Henry Ernest Dudeney.  The puzzle is a useful one for teaching deeper mathematical thinking because while it can be solved by trial and error thinking about the maths behind it can make it much easier. 

The goal is to choose a number that all 4 sides of the frame can add up to and arrange the cards to do this.  Some numbers are possible some numbers are not.  This puzzle has been selected as it allows students of all abilities to have a go as the maths involved is not difficult.  The challenge should be to find a method of determining what numbers can be used as the common total amount and then how to make finding the layout much easier.  The resource provided here allows the puzzle to be demonstrated easily and can also allow whole class discussion of how to approach the problem.  Clicking on one card and then another causes them to swap places.  The resource totals the different lines automatically.  The original wording of the puzzle can be made to appear by clicking on the question mark button.

A printable sheet accompanies this resource which includes the original wording and diagram. It also includes the appropriate cards for cutting out to do the puzzle away from a computer.  If teachers would like the solution and maths behind it leave a comment with your email address in the box (it will not be published).  There will be at least a 5 day delay to ensure that students who have been set this as homework aren’t cheating by impersonating a teacher!

Go to interactive whiteboard resource.

Get printable resource.

[Read more →]

This interactive whiteboard resource is inspired by one of the entries in the book: Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart.

It focusses on repeating tiles where duplicates of a shape combine to form a larger version of the same shape.  The picture above shows one such shape about to be completed.  This can form part of a lesson on tessellation or investigating shape properties.

Each tile has 3 icons on it.  One to drag it, one to rotate it, and one to flip it.  The icons down the right hand side let you choose one of 7 different types of repeating tiles.

Also included is a collection of the shapes that can be downloaded, printed, and cut out so that the students can work individually on solving each shape.  Some of the solutions require the shapes to be flipped so their reverse could be shaded by the students first.

Go to interactive whiteboard resource.

Download worksheets.

[Read more →]

An interactive whiteboard resource to support any investigations using dominoes. In particular this resource was created to support classroom use of puzzles included in a book by Henry Ernest Dudeney in 1917. Books this old are in the public domain and so their contents can be distributed and built upon freely.

Rather than leaving these books overlooked for new ones it was decided to build some resources to go with them so that they can be used quickly and cheaply in the classroom. This is the first of a number in development.

The dominoes can be manipulated by dragging, dropping and rotating. Clicking on the puzzles button brings up one of two puzzles that can be demonstrated using this resource. Both of these puzzles are available in printed form below. All are worded in the original, rather fatherly tones, of the original writer. Also available is a sheet of printable dominoes to allow students to work individually on the two puzzles. The puzzle will be easier to do using printed or real dominoes than on the computer but the IWB is useful for demonstrational purposes.

The answers are not published here to prevent students getting an advantage if this is set for homework. The answers aren’t really necessary as the learning is in the trying but if teachers are desperate for the answers leave a comment.

Go to interactive whiteboard resource.

Get printable dominoes.

Get puzzle 1.

Get puzzle 2.

[Read more →]

An interactive whiteboard resource to facilitate lessons involving the investigation of pentominoes. One of each of the 12 different types of pentomino appear on the grid. Each pentomino can be rotated and flipped. A guide grid for each of the rectangles that can be filled with pentominoes can also be toggled.

Go to Pentomino Interactive Whiteboard Resource.

For use in conjunction with this resource are a number of PDF resources.

A set of pentominoes that can be cut out.

A sheet of guide grids for use with the pentominoes.

A sheet showing possible pentomino solutions.

An instruction sheet for the resource.

[Read more →]