Tuesday, 30 June 2015
Simplifying Surds Task/Resource
A couple of weeks ago I was teaching Surds to my Y9 class (doing the new Edexcel 1-9 GCSE Spec). I was looking for a resource to use with them, having covered simplifying surds. I looked on the TES and found the below resource by Sharon Derbyshire (@numberloving).
The resource is differentiated into 3 different treasure hunt style tasks. There's a green, amber and red set. I just used the green and amber sets with my class. I gave them the worksheet, printed on both sides of A4 paper. They then chose which set of questions they attempted, the green or the amber. However, instead of running the task like a traditional treasure hunt where they move around the room answering a question then find the answer on another, I decided to just scatter the cards onto my whiteboard (as shown below). My students then answered the questions on the sheet and then, when ready, came to the board to write the lines of the joke in the space on their sheet. Some students chose to do all the questions first and then piece together the joke. Others did a question at a time, found the answer on the board (according to the colour route they chose) and then wrote a line at a time of the joke.
What I really liked about this task is that the joke is the same regardless of the route they chose and so students are working towards the same 'end game', just on differently difficult/paced questions. The scattered effect of the cards on the board worked well as some could see from their desks and others got up as they needed to. The different colours on the board made it easy for them to see which set they were looking for and there were a few cards that had the same answer, which got them thinking about whether the joke was actually making sense as they went through it.
The cards scattered on my board:
You can download the resource free by clicking on the below link...
A massive thanks to Sharon for sharing and uploading.