Stratford Upon Avon – such an inspiring place for a conference.The day started with a tour of the Guildhall and Shakespeare’s schoolroom, organised by Rob Eastaway as a pre-conference ‘bonus’.

I was expecting it to be interesting, but nothing prepared our small group of 15 or so folk for the fantastic, evocative and informative experience.

So many wow moments-  the highlight for me was sitting in the schoolroom with a former drama and English teacher, Peter Carrington-Porter, who brilliantly portrayed Shakespeare’s teacher Master Jenkins.

The curriculum in the 1600s consisted of: Logic, rhetoric, a little maths, Latin and metaphysics. Not sure how wel I would have done, given the emphasis on rote memorisation!

Back to the hotel, and time for a quick tour of the exhibitors hall resulted in the acquisition of a set of polydron pieces – I feel that this is a very under-used resource yet almost every school has a tray of it. I had a good chat with Richard and Hannah who were on the stand about CPD opportunities.

Onto the conference proper – the opening plenary was from Katie Steckles. Stecks has done more than most of us over the years to popularise maths and make it accessible.

Unsurprisingly, Katie was both witty and engaging. She started with A4 and showed us some lovely uses of the ratio of the sides. She covered different paper sizes such as American ‘letter’ and ‘legal’ sizes, and how these led to the creation of the flexagon. We even made some (with varying degrees of success!) Make one – bit.ly/tri-tetra is the link to Katie’s instructions…

If you are feeling really brave, you could even try this one: bit.ly/hexaflexyourself.

Of course, no session on paper would be complete without the ubiquitous and beautiful Mobius Strip. I always love the inevitable ooohs and aaahs that acompany the result of the  various cuts. Note to self: as soon as exams are over this will be my first maths lesson… J

Katie finished with making letters with a single cut. The ‘Fold and Cut’ Theorem says that for any shape made from straight lines, there is a fold pattern that will allow the shape to be made with a single cut.

A brilliant start to the conference – and now lunch!