I've always seen the summer months as an opportunity for informal professional development - a chance to (slowly) expand my thinking. This year, I've started early, reading ‘Mathematics Lessons to Look Forward To’ by Jim Noble (InThinking DP Math Applications & Interpretations).

From the off, we're reminded of the benefit of imagining and producing the arguments required to ‘hook’ the reader: Why this book? Why these topics? Why me? And we're plunged into a world of TOK, including types of reasoning, considerations of how scientists and mathematicians might see things differently, and the role of intuition. Jim's characteristic humility is clear in repeated use of the phrase “I think” and the casual ‘needle drop’ references (including the Sagrada Familia, Despicable Me and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) add charm and wit. He has also been wonderfully academically honest; Jim models how we can acknowledge the inspiration and tangible resources from others in a way that heightens our respect (e.g. The Lost Bone). 

International mindedness is a recurring theme, with The Village of 100 People and Great Piles of Rice inviting students to think globally while also inviting the whole-school community to think mathematically. In Statistics Telling Stories, Jim withholds the (profound and solemn) punchline even from the reader. Jim also accepts that different teachers have different personalities and styles. While we learn early on that Jim is a proponent of hands-on learning (“I can't imagine teaching students about prisms without letting them make some”), we're not being sold an unrealistic utopia. The end-of-chapter thoughts, themes and tasks to try include tactics for differentiation and feedback.

As Jim says himself, other people's ideas are amazing; even when we recognise them, we learn something new. Just so with Match Point, where I'll take away the freedom of providing unequal numbers of matching cards and scaled challenges when teaching ‘content’. Similarly, Population Growth suggests that we teachers start with our own complete picture and then remove information, tasking students with restoring it. I've also learned from Cubism that it's possible to take photographs directly into a Google Drive folder - and that multilink cubes are ideal for decay modelling!

In Human Loci, students become the thing they are learning about (not just an analogy). This could be a start-of-year ice-breaker by taking our introductions to vectors, kinematics and circular motion into the outdoors. In Starting from Scratch, students discover things for themselves by springing off an initial instruction and tapping into instant feedback, much like this site's activities! Our subject also contains many potential Impossible Diagrams: free body, circuit, refraction… Could students be tasked with creating the questions and ‘possible’ or ‘impossible’ answers?

Two chapters have been written as though directly for us physicists: Hot Wheels with distance time graphs (and beyond) produced in real time and at scales visible to the whole class (a reminder that we don't always need to go via a table of results, for example when making pencil resistance graphs) and Dancing Vectors. I'll also consider Maxbox if it's not done by mathematical colleagues; while exploring volume wouldn't be a good IA because it's not related to physical laws, it would be a fabulous introduction to the mathematical skills needed for investigations (variables, spreadsheets and a graph with an interesting turning point).

I'm sure we can all agree with Jim that there are things about our subjects that we don't fully appreciate until we become teachers. Indeed, we teachers are called to keep pursuing the subject we teach, just like students ought not simply ‘do’ quadratics and move on. And the book itself is the ideal handbag - a conversation starter given the eye-catching cover, the oddness of reading about mathematics education and Jim's fame. 

Perhaps we could all do with carrying a book while walking around and beyond school. It's on us as educators to help alleviate digital temptations in those we serve as role models for - and remind our students that it's worth reading the original source of good ideas.