This article presents some paper-folding activities for students to explore a different way to prove some of the angle properties in a circle.

As outlined in the paper "The 20 Matchstick Triangle Challenge: An Activity to Foster Reasoning and Problem Solving" by Pat Graham and Helen Chick [EJ1093090], an incredibly useful set of information about the mathematical ability of your students will be revealed. You can look at the way your students try to solve the 20 matchsticks…

The plane problem is a real-world problem, presented without any suggestion as to how it might be solved. It arose unexpectedly as the author was messing around on the internet, not thinking about maths at all. She did not encounter the problem in a maths lesson, nor as homework in the middle of a unit on a particular topic, and so she had no…

Most readers would be familiar with the standard domino set which is played with rectangular domino tiles. The domino set, sometimes called a deck or pack, consists of 28 dominoes, colloquially nicknamed bones, cards, tiles, stones, or spinners. A domino set is a generic gaming device, similar to playing cards or dice, in that a variety of games…

Almost 20 years ago, Cuoco, Goldenberg, and Mark wrote a seminal paper for the "Journal of Mathematical Behavior" entitled "Habits of Mind: An Organizing Principle for Mathematics Curricula" (Cuoco et al., 1996). The article remains as relevant today as when it was originally published. The premise of their paper is that…

Pascal's triangle is an arrangement of the binomial coefficients in a triangle. Each number inside Pascal's triangle is calculated by adding the two numbers above it. When all the odd integers in Pascal's triangle are highlighted (black) and the remaining evens are left blank (white), one of many patterns in Pascal's triangle is displayed. By…

Using investigations in teaching mathematics has for many years become an established feature of most curricula around the world. Investigations can be a vehicle for enabling children to experience the genuine excitement that comes from mathematical discovery. The true spirit of inquiry and investigation lies in the mind-set that continually asks…

Learning about the area formulas provides many opportunities for students even at the beginning of junior secondary school to experience mathematical deduction. For example, in easy cases, students can put two triangles together to make a rectangle, and so deduce that the area of a triangle is half the area of a corresponding rectangle. They can…

Engaging students with real-world activities can be effective in supporting the learning of mathematics, "whenever possible, real-world situations will provide a context for both introducing and applying geometric topics" (NCTM 1989). Tool making is a way to bring real-world mathematics into the classroom and using the tool is a way of…

This article discusses how paper folding can be used in the classroom to introduce the standard results of school geometry, such as the transversal and parallel lines results, along with results concerning angles in convex polygons and centres of triangles, for example. Angle bisectors, midpoints, perpendiculars are all straightforward…

Presents an activity in which students study mathematically the structure of the most perfect building ever created, the Parthenon. Focuses on the conic sections. (ASK)

Presents an activity on polyominoes and soma cubes in which students look for patterns. Presents the author's personal reflection on her practical teaching experiences as a student teacher. (ASK)

Presents an activity in which students study geometrically the structure of tiling in a cafe in Bristol. (ASK)

Introduces handling data as conceived by Euclid, which provides some interesting possibilities for students to investigate fundamental geometrical ideas as well as relating some elementary geometry with elementary trigonometry. (ASK)