iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I'm starting to wonder if MoneyWeek is just a rage bait page for maths people. Wtf is going on with the vertical scale?!

A bar chart titled "How the basic state pension has changed since 1948"
The bars do not go up in equal increments: the years are 1948, 1951, 1955, 1961, 1965, 1969, 1975, 1975 (again), 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, 2025, 2026

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I love looking back at previous order numbers for Senior Maths Challenge over the time I've been in charge of running it. Making tricky non-calculator voluntary maths tests cool amongst teenagers since 2021 😎😅 #MathsToday

The number of packs of 10 UKMT Senior Maths Challenge entries ordered each year increases from 5 in 2021 to 23 in 2026.

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Resorting to emotional blackmail to stop people stealing my staplers 😅

Two staplers with handwritten labels stuck on the top.
"Ash 24 is my happy place - please leave me here!"
"Please keep me in Ash 24 - I like it here!"

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Today in "really bad graphs". Why would you add the median and mean together, when they are two different comparitive measures of the same data?! Ew. #MathsToday

A screenshot from a post by MoneyWeek. The title of the graph is "Average net worth by age" with increments going up in 5 year blocks from 20 to 24, to 90 plus. The values for median net worth and mean net worth are shown in light green and dark green respectively, and have been added together in each bar to make a total length of "median plus mean".

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

New year's resolutions always feel more meaningful for me in September, rather than January. Week 3 of Operation Drag Self Out Of Bed And Run Before Work has been achieved. I feel like it's going to be harder (colder/darker) going forward, and have optimistically purchased a reflective vest... 😬🏃‍♀️

A screenshot from Strava showing distances run each day for the last 4 weeks. The circles typically show around 5.2km, 3-4 times per week.
Today was a bit longer (10.1km) because it is the weekend...

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Behold, the staple-free stapler 🤩 Not actually #MathsToday, but still very exciting.

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

It bothers me that The Guardian apparently doesn't have enough colours to do this graph properly 😅 Anyway, here's our annual reminder that Maths is the most popular #ALevelMaths subject in England #MathsToday www.theguardian.com/education/20...

A graph showing the top 12 subjects in England taken at A Level, ranked by popularity. Maths has been consistently at the top since the scale starts in 2017. Economics has risen dramatically, from 11th to 5th, in this time. A lot of the lines are the same shade of grey (the link leads to an interactive version of the graph where the subjects can be determined more easily)

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Looking at the Alps data for last week's results. The thermometer thing is a really bloody stupid way of displaying value added. Small number? Oh, that's good. Big numbers bad. Data highlighted in red? Yep, also good 🙄 It's the worst thing in KS5 performance data. This is a hill I will die on 🏔

A thermometer diagram with the number 1 at the top and 9 at the bottom. The top 25% is red, to represent the top 25% of performance. The middle 50%is black. Thr bottom 25% is blue. The word "bottom" is, for unknown reasons, above the 9.

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Currently trending on Bluesky... the result of tomorrow's by-election 🤨 And this is why we should take anything generated by an algorithm with a giant pinch of salt...

A screenshot of the trending topics on Bluesky. Number 2 is "Farage wins Clacton seat".

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I think about this art installation a lot.

A man standing in front of a blue wall with his arms folded, laughing. There is a message spelled out in gold balloons on the wall that reads "I'm not going to your event if the flyer is AI"

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

So, I'm not saying I need the holidays for the good of my health, but this graph is definitely saying that 😅🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️

A screenshot from the Strava app showing fitness levels over the past month. There is a fairly steady increase, and it says there is a 92% increase over the past 30 days.

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I was just wondering whether a million watermelons was too many...

A box of watermelons with a sign "MegaWatermelon, loose per kg 1.29"

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

York Minster advertising its ticket price as "6p per visit" is my current favourite example of creative maths 😅

A photo of York Minster taken from the air, with the words "YOUR TICKET IS NOT A SINGULAR TRIP. It's 365 days of access to one of the world's most magnificent cathedrals"
Underneath is a small tag saying "6p per visit".

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I don't know if anyone needs to hear this, but if you're single and considering booking a solo trip, you should absolutely do it if you can. It's low-key terrifying at first (and second, and third...), but also very liberating to get to explore places completely on your own schedule 😊

Three DK Eyewitness "Top 10" guides: Florence, Lisbon and Stockholm.

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

I feel this cartoon in my bones 😅

A cartoon by Gemma Correll. It is a play on the "princess and the pea" story, where the pea is a slightly negative comment and the piles of mattresses above it are positive comments. The princess lies awake on the top, looking sad.

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Just looking through this year's thank you cards from students before I put them away in a safe place. I've not quite reached the age of teaching the kids of people I've taught yet, but I am at the point where my former students are now teachers who have taught my current students! ❤️ #MathsToday

A section of a handwritten card that says, in brackets:
"Also, my maths teacher from secondary was taught by you, and when I left she said if I had you, I would be learning from the best!"

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

This is what students see when they log in

A screenshot showing 4 further maths textbooks

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

So, I met one of the Casio "moflins" today at the MEI conference. It's quite cute, but I'm not convinced by the £370 price tag!

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Don't send me unsolicited DMs like this. I will immediately block you.

🚀 Rеаdy fоr ѕоmеthing ѕресiаl?

А limitеd-timе Bluе Ѕky bаdgе саmраign iѕ nоw livе.

Find оut mоrе:
👉 https://t.co/LjVr3Rpoe7

🏅 Јоin thе еxсitеmеnt tоdаy!

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

It is incredibly hot in my classroom, but it's the last day of teaching for us and my #ALevelMaths further maths students have not disappointed in their quiz team name and mascot choices #MathsToday

Team names are: No Real Solutions, ÷ and conquer, Pi me to the moon, Alge-bros and Proof by Common Sense

Mascots are: David Hilbert, Pythagoras, Miguel Guan, Fibonacci and Euclid

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Slightly worried for my classroom tomorrow... 😬

A screenshot of a weather forecast, showing Friday as 27°C and sunny

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

In #MathsToday our #ALevelMaths students have finished their final exam! Huge sigh of relief and smiles all round 🥳 We offered them the chance to bring in their old textbook and swap it for a chocolate bar (they all buy a new book at the beginning of the course, so this is a way to pass old ones on)

A classroom desk with piles of blue A Level Maths textbooks on top

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Have made a warm up grid for AQA #ALevelMaths paper 3, featuring statistics and some unseen pure topics. Feel free to use/edit (I've included the editable Word version) - let me know if you spot any mistakes 🙂 #MathsToday wykecollege-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/person...

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Not the same topic, but this sort of layout is much nicer (IMHO)

Question 16 AQA A Level Maths 2023 Paper 3

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Got some new lanyard bling (the bottom badge) It felt very appropriate, as the students seem to get younger every year 😅

A badge that reads "Please be patient with me, I'm from the 1900s"

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

A student gave me some stickers inside a thank you card. They're now on the front of next year's diary 😄 #MathsToday

A brightly coloured 2026-2027 academic year diary, with two stickers on the front.
One says "sin(gerine)/cos(gerine) =" then a picture of a tangerine.
The other says "How to be a math person: Step 1: Do math (any type) Step 2: Be a person"

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

A warm up grid for AQA Paper 2 #ALevelMaths 2026 with a mixture of mechanics questions and pure topics not seen in Paper 1. There's a pdf version, and an editable Word version 🙂 #MathsToday wykecollege-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/person...

A screenshot of a warm up grid with a mixture of pure and mechanics questions, with the title A Level Maths Paper 2 - 2026

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Err, are you sure there isn't a more conventional way I could share it? 😅😂 #MathsToday #ALevelMaths

A screenshot from One drive that says

Share "2026 Paper Analy...

sis"

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Happy half term! 😎✈️🌍

A Top 10 Copenhagen guide book and a UK passport

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

One of my #ALevelMaths further maths students gave me a stamp with the proof by induction conclusion on as a brilliant leaving gift, to save me having to write it out every time 😅🥰 #MathsToday

A stamp that reads "As the statement is true for n=1, and if true for n=k is also true for n=k+1, it is proven by induction that:"

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

In #MathsToday it's the final day for year 2, so my A Level Further Maths students had a quiz (with questions taken from the brilliant @draustinmaths.com further maths section for each round)

Further Maths - Final Showdown!
Get into teams (2-5 people)
Pick a team name
Pick a team mascot (must be a famous mathematican)

Side quests (for bonus points)
Best maths joke (5 points)
Reciting pi to the most decimal places (4 points)
Writing out the Greek alphabet in the nicest handwriting (3 points)
Picking the smallest unique positive integer (2 points)
Extra points: 10-2n, where n is the number of people in your team

Round 1: Improper Integrals
2 points per correct answer
3 points for everything correct
4 bonus points for the fastest team
2 bonus points for the second fastest team

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

In #MathsToday I ran the first lunchtime practice session for year 1 #ALevelMaths students planning on taking the TMUA admissions test next year. We got out the big whiteboards and worked on some problems together. This one provoked some good conversations about limits and sums of integrals!

Question 3 Paper 1 TMUA 2023.
Students are asked to find a sum of integrals of an unknown function f(x) given a rule involving the integral from n to n+1.

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

I ignored them for a while, until it became almost unmanageable and I had to collect a few in. At which point, a giant duck appeared, signed by the whole class 😅 Our students are so funny... I'm going to miss them when they leave next week ❤️ #MathsToday #ALevelMaths

A large pile of plastic ducks on a maths worksheet

A large plastic duck signed in a sharpie pen

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Over the past term, my students have started leaving tiny plastic ducks in my classroom. Just 2 or 3 a day, so that I barely noticed at first. On the computer, on the side, on the clock, blu-tacked to the end of my pens...

4 plastic ducks on the top of the PC screen

12 plastic ducks around the rim of a clock

3 plastic ducks along the side of a PC screen

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Apparently it's 9 years ago since our maths department (staff and students) all became temporarily obsessed with trying to work out the mystery data challenge from (I think) Significance Magazine... #MathsToday

The mystery data challenge
7 line graphs labelled with each day of the week. The lines are roughly horizontal, but there is a peak at around 8am on week days and a smaller peak early afternoon, on week days. The peaks do not appear on weekends.

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Does anyone else quite enjoy working through the paper after an exam, or is it just me? 😅 (Promised my students I'd do it for tomorrow, as they wanted to compare answers) #MathsToday #ALevelMaths

The front cover of a exam paper: AS Further Mathematics Paper 1. Monday 11 May 2026.

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Ooh, interesting UKMT update! 👀 Seems like a sensible system, which is already used for the whole of the Senior Kangaroo... 🦘

Important Updates:

Senior Mathematical Challenge 2026:

For the Senior Mathematical Challenge 2026, we are trialling a change for the last three questions of the paper. Instead of these questions being multiple choice like usual, they will be in 000-999 format, where students will have to choose three digit answers. Example answer sheets will be available soon so you can help your students prepare.

In our competitions, we always aim for students with the highest scores to have achieved them as a result of careful thought rather than guessing. We hope that this will promote discussion after the challenge and reduce accidental success!

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Close, we use the Cambridge ones...

A Level Further Mathematics for AQA
Student book 1
A textbook with a black and yellow cover

A Level Further Mathematics for AQA
Student book 2
A textbook with a black and purple cover

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

In #ALevelMaths Further Maths, we are addressing the eternal question of "but how was I supposed to know it was a hyperbolic substitution?" #MathsToday

A table of terms in an integral (such as 1 + x²) and a suggested substitution such as x = sinhθ, with the corresponding identity

Some integration questions using the suggested identities from the previous table

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

I really like this graph. Pondering how I could use it in a maths lesson... #MathsToday

How good is "good"? Now with even more words! On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is "very negative" and 10 is "very positive", in general, how positive or negative would the following word/phrase be to someone when you used it to describe something?

Followed by a series of graphs with the numbers 0 to 10 along the horizontal axis, and words such as "abysmal", "bad", decent", "superb" etc on the vertical axis. Each graph shows a peak at the number that most people attributed to that word. The more negative words have a red graph, the middle ones have an amber graph, and the more positive ones have a green graph.

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

In #MathsToday, the ducks that appeared in my classroom have been multiplying. There were 2... then another 2... and now there are 10 😅🦆

A yellow duck and a pink duck sitting on the top of a computer screen

A yellow duck and a blue duck sitting on the top of a computer screen

Six small plastic ducks in assorted colours line up along the back of a classroom

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

In #MathsToday I find that my #ALevelMaths students often try to use the SUVAT equations for non-constant acceleration questions (when they should use calculus instead) so I have invented a twist on the classic game "Is it cake?"... which I'm calling "Is it SUVAT?" 😅🍰

Is it SUVAT?
For each question, decide whether the question involves constant acceleration (use the SUVAT equations) or non-constant acceleration (use differentiation/integration)

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

In #MathsToday I tried @theteacherwins.bsky.social's idea of getting the students to take turns answering an #ALevelMaths question, to focus on clearly setting out their steps, so that the other person could pick up from where they got up to. It went really well, and they seemed to enjoy it!

An A Level mechanics question on inclined planes, with the answers in two different coloured pens. The students had 60 seconds each before passing the paper to their partner to continue. I think with a regular group I may have given them 90 seconds, but these were further maths students so 60 was enough.

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

wykecollege-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/person...

An example of one of the revision checklists, on the topic of coordinate geometry and sequences/series

A screenshot of the video links sent to students each week

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

This is in the teaching guidance

be given.
Assumed knowledge
It is expected that students will be competent in all topics which appear in standard type in the
GCSE curriculum (see AQA specification 8300).
Competence in the following topics, which are underlined in the GCSE curriculum, is also expected:
• surface area and volume of spheres, pyramids, cones and composite solids
• arc lengths, angles and areas of sectors of circles
• similar shapes
• Pythagoras’ Theorem in 2-D shapes
Competence in the following topic, which is bold in the GCSE curriculum, is also expected:
• Pythagoras’ Theorem in 3-D shapes
Students are expected to understand the use and notation of spreadsheets, including:
• “= A1 + A2 + A3” to sum values in cells
• “= 2*B3” to multiply a value given in a cell
• “= SUM(A1:A10)” to sum values in cells

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Emily Rae @ecrmaths.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

In #MathsToday I have used the AQA shadow papers to create some "second chance" papers for my Further #ALevelMaths students, to give them the opportunity to have another go at questions they previously got wrong in the mocks, but feel they could now do. Selling it to them as their redemption arc 😅

The front cover of a second chance paper. The paper is based on the first 11 questions of the winter mock exam, and is worth 29 marks. It asks "How do you feel this went in comparison to the original assessment?"

A Level Further Mathematics – Second Chance Papers

Have you ever looked back over a mock exam paper and wished you could have a second chance to sit it? Ever been haunted by a silly mistake and thought, “I know I could do that now”?

Now is your chance for redemption…

6 “second chance” papers, with shadow questions (same questions, with slightly different numbers), based on the winter and spring mock papers.

Available now in the Maths support room (Ash 38 at lunchtime, Tuesday - Friday)

Do as many (or as few) as you like, in any order. Once you have marked it, hand it in for your grade/mark to be recorded.

Good luck!

Followed by a table listing the number of marks on each paper, and the questions they are based on.

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