Month: Oct 2025

A Level Variation Theory

Had an absolutely glorious time running a workshop at Mathsconf39 with my colleague Shane a couple of weeks ago.

I have attached the PPT that we used at the top of this post so people can use it in department meetings as CPD or just to take a look at some series of questions.

The biggest take away from the session is that designing questions based around getting our students to think deeply is great from students but also just fantastic CPD. We start our department meeting with a slide such as the one below and then discuss the differences and similarities between the questions that we have written. So much fun!

Some of the mathematical behaviours we want students to have:

Big shout out to Craig Barton for the fantastic book and websites

If you came to the session and have any feedback for us please do email us here 🙂

Thank you!

Natan

I always like using simpler integration by substitution examples to start of, things that students know how to integrate already that we can then use substitution to do before moving onto trickier substitutions.

Got the above questions from Underground Maths – added a couple of limits but that’s it – such great questions

Finished off with some trig substitution ones. PPT here:

NLV

Odds and Evens

Had a fun time planning a one off hour lesson prepping students for the Intermediate Maths Challenge so we took a look at factorials, in particular looking at properties of their factors. Put together the following PPT and had a great time!

Let me know your thoughts!

@mrlevmaths.bsky.social

Inspired by interwoven maths made a worksheet combining triangle problems with circle theorem problems. Was a bit fiddly on PPT but fun! Answers on the PPT 🙂

Enjoy!

NLV