Numberphile.com is a website your pupils simply must know about. It describes itself as “videos about numbers and stuff” which is a pretty good summary in my opinion. The videos are not tutorial skill-based offerings, but engaging adventures into interesting mathematical concepts and problems. I really like them as they show maths at its best: interesting problems and fascinating results, rather than contrived contextual links. That’s not to say there isn’t context, but where there is it is meaningful and adds to the intrigue.
Here is an example of one their videos called Dragon Curve:
These videos are the KS3 maths curriculum we’d all love to be teaching if standardised testing and judging teachers and students on exam-based success we not the order of the day. The passion and enthusiasm of the presenters combined with the engaging subject matter definitely stoke the flames of enquiry. Pupils I have shown the Numberphile videos to did react very positively to them; many wanting to know more about the maths behind them.
There are links in the videos to topics we do teach however, and I think there are plenty of opportunities to get these videos in as starters, plenaries or interesting homeworks. I commend them to you!
Enjoy!
