Pat Ashforth & Steve Plummer

We can't do all the work for you

 

... and we know you wouldn't want us to

 

... but we can save you a lot of time!

 

The Maths Blocks CD is jammed full of resources and over 200 hours of ready-to-use lessons.

 

What more could the over-worked Maths teacher want?

What is it?

 

The CD contains nearly 200 PowerPoint presentation Maths lessons, aimed at 11 - 16 year olds, plus many worksheets, starters and investigations based on over 30 years of teaching Maths in UK high schools.

 

The presentations will provide you with hundreds of hours of work. Some contain blocks of work that will spread over many individual lessons.

 

These lessons are written by real teachers, for real teachers. You won't be wasting your money on flashy titles or sound effects; these are not games or 5 minute fillers. They are 'serious' Maths lessons intended to provide a diversity of approach when used alongside your other teaching resources.

 

Although each presentation contains all the information and examples you need, most need the input of the teacher to bring them to life. Some are suitable for students to work through alone, or for revision purposes, but, generally speaking, the more you put in the more relevant they will be to your pupils.

 

Only you can know the level of your students and whether they have all the necessary background knowledge. Unfortunately, we can't do that part for you.

 

We can't mark their books for you either but most lessons come complete with answers which can be kept hidden until you wish to reveal them - so they can mark their own, allowing you to check on progress and give immediate feedback.

 

There are no National Curriculum levels. You will have to make your own decisions about the relevance of the lessons to your various groups of pupils.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do I get?

 

Nearly 200 PowerPoint stage-by-stage presentations which allow you to move through at your own speed. These contain information, explanations, examples, tables, charts, graphs, moving diagrams, and answers for all levels of the National Curriculum, in the Secondary sector.

 

Worksheets to reinforce and supplement some of the lessons, in a variety of formats. (Other worksheets can be produced by printing the relevant slides from a presentation.)

 

In case you do not have the programs for using the presentations, we include a PowerPoint Viewer for you to install on your computer.

 

We also include an installation for the complete suite of OpenOffice 2.2. This will allow you to edit any of the presentations and to do anything else you would do with Microsoft Office.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How do I use it?

 

The lessons are accessed by an autorun menu system. Clicking a block on a menu will lead you to another block menu or to a list, depending on where you are. Clicking on the list will bring up the full-screen lesson, ready to begin.

 

Each click of the mouse will add the next piece of information, diagram, question, etc.

 

Before you use a lesson you must familiarise yourself with the content in order to assess whether your students have all the knowledge they need and where you will need to refer back to previous work or reinforce points already made. The lessons do not make the teacher redundant.

 

In addition to the autorun facility you also have the option of editing or adding to any of the menus and presentations. You may wish to change some of the details to make them relevant to your class; you may need to add more examples for slower groups, or to remove some for a more able group; you may want to add your own favourite lessons into the overall structure. You can do all of these things. There is space to add in extras in most areas, and some advice on how to do it.

 

We have found OpenOffice to be an excellent program for editing, without the expense of Microsoft Office - with one small drawback. As yet, we have not found a way to save changes to presentations in a format that will allow them to autorun. This is a very minor inconvenience as you only need to click 'Run Show' to achieve the same effect.

(Note: The CD was compiled in 2007 so more up-to-date versions of OpenOffice are now available. The same problems may not occur).

 

If you want to use one of the lessons to impress in Performance Management or Peer Observation you can use the presentation alone with no obvious sign of it coming from a collection of lessons. After all, your peers (or boss) might believe you created one lesson but be a little suspicious of hundreds.

 

Click below to see more. The sample lesson will only run if you have a PowerPoint Viewer on your computer.

Download PowerPoint Viewer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What does it cost?

 

The cost of the CD, per teacher, is £55   £25 (including postage)

 

 

This cost allows an individual teacher to copy the materials on to computers for use in their own teaching or as revision, consolidation, extension and support materials for the pupils they teach.

 

Even though we would not expect a school to purchase discs for every member of a faculty, we would expect a faculty to make a moral judgement as to how many discs it needed.

 

Supplementary materials for pupils could be in the form of copies of the disc which could be sold on to your students, at a price of your choosing, for revision or homework. The disc allows you to add extra materials of your own, before copying, should you wish to do so.

 

Copies of the disc may not be sold, or given, to anyone outside your own school.

 

 

 

Email us, if you want to pay by cheque or electronic bank transfer or if you require any kind of documentation for your school.

 

Alternative email (in case of problems or no response)

 

There is currently an error in checkout. The cost is £25 including postage. If you are charged postage, it will be refunded. Alternatively go to Paypal and pay £25 directly to sales@woollythoughts.com