4 great resources for teaching collecting like terms in algebra

Ever been teaching collecting like terms (simplifying) and just needed 20 questions you could put up on your interactive white board to set the pupils off on? Looking for the questions to be differentiated according to ability and for the answers to be on the next slide? If so, check out this pdf slideshow!

Instead of a list of questions, how about giving the pupils a ‘collecting like terms pyramid’ to climb! The worksheets work in the conventional manner where the bricks above are made by collecting the like terms from the two below. The worksheets are differentiated as easy and a bit harder.

Alternatively, just looking for a conventional worksheet, but one that has lots of scaffolding with worked examples and an explanation of the process? If so then check out this worksheet!

Hope you find these resources handy!

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Probably the best blogs by maths teachers around the world

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

There are some really great blogs out there written by maths teachers who really care about their practice. I enjoy reading their posts as they share their insight and ideas and think about how it could improve my own teaching.

There is wheat and there is chaff out there. To save you time in separating the two, I have compiled this list of the best blogs I have found so far:

Introducing algebra- consecutive numbers addition puzzle

Here’s are really good way of introducing algebra and getting across the idea of what a variable is. The pdf slides that you can use on the interactive white board to run this activity are here.

Start by getting the pupils to draw this diagram in their books:

Substitution Top Trumps

Do you remember playing the Top Trumps card game as a kid? Here are a couple of Top Trumps card game resources that will make any lesson about substitution really fun.

Click here for the animal substitution Top Trump cards.

Click here for the dinosaur substitution Top Trump cards. These are for higher attaining classes and feature brackets and indices.

There are lots of ways you can play Top Trumps but here’s one suggestion of how you can run the activity:

• Give one set of the cards to each pair.
• Place one of the cards defining a=, b=, c= on each table.
• Each pair splits their set of cards randomly into two and take one pile each.
• The first player speaks out a characteristic and the value (obtained by using substitution), e.g. “Speed 5”.
• The second player would look up the speed characteristic on their card and calculates the value.
• The person with the highest value is the winner and takes both cards and puts them at the back of their pile. If it is a draw then each player puts their own card to the back or their pile.
• The winner then starts the next turn by looking at the next card in their pile and reading out a characteristic and the value.
• The game carries on until one person has all of the cards.

Have fun!

Thanks to “kez84” on www.tes.co.uk for this excellent resource and also to Steph W for suggesting it.

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