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What is it?
The beauty of many of the more complex questions involving angles on parallel lines is that they can be solved several different ways. It is important that students experience seeing different methods so they can build up a more comprehensive understanding of the topic, as well as being armed with several different ways into a problem should their preferred method let them down on a particular question. This resource from Jo Morgan is fantastic for enabling students to develop more flexible approaches and get them talking to each other. It is really well presented and structured.

How can it be used?
I run this activity exactly as Jo advises. I give students sufficient time to try the problems on their own, and then ask them to discuss answers and compare methods. I found doing the first question and then discussing was more successful than allowing students to try all the questions first as it means students can use what they learn from that first discussion in the subsequent problems. It is also useful to try to tease out of students which method or approach was most suitable for which problems, and why this might be the case. All of these things serve to widen their understanding, as well as helping them, develop a more flexible, robust problem-solving toolkit for similar angle problems. We also have the option to challenge students to create their own problems that can be solved in multiple ways, possibly going as far as creating a mark scheme for each approach.

Thanks so much for sharing
Craig Barton

Download: Angles in Parallel Lines: Comparing Methods
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