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What is it?
Often really good resources for teaching A Level maths are hard to find, largely because not as many teachers deliver the course. Hence, while you can find no end of top-quality lessons, activities and resources across TES for Key Stages 1 to 4, as soon as we hit that post-16 area, things get a little more barren. But there are gems out there, such as this delightful lesson on the nature of stationary points. It is a beautifully designed, detailed PowerPoint that gives a crystal clear explanation how to determine the nature of stationary points, together with several well-chosen worked examples. I particularly like the way common misconceptions or covered via a series of handy hints. For example, the fact that the graph can contain y-values lower than the minimum point, and a minimum followed by a maximum does not automatically guarantee that the graph is a cubic. These can often be overlooked and may lead to problems later on.

How can it be used?
As with all PowerPoint lessons on TES, I always advise adapting it to suit the needs of your students The slides are very detailed, and stripping them back may add clarity. There is also always a danger when having pre-written solutions to worked examples that you may wish to change things based on something a student says, and yet your hands are tied if all the steps of the example have been typed out and animated. But the detail in these slides could be used to your advantage by turning them into printed notes that could be given to students for revision, or to any student who may have missed the lesson. This is a wonderful resource to aid the planning of any lesson on the nature of stationary points.

Thanks so much for sharing
Craig Barton

Download: Finding turning points with calculus
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