Introduces Ciphers - The Pigpen Cipher. Encryption and decryption activities. Extension activity based on steganography. These activities use ciphers and World War 2 to introduce algebra. They were made to use in a Maths and History cross-curricular project. Resources I cannot remember (and couldn’t find again) where I got all of the the World War 2 messages from. Stallings, W. (2011). Cryptography and Network Security, Fifth Edition, Prentice Hall. www.cryptoclub.org is a website with a range of activities that is worth exploring for quick encryptions and decryptions.

Students learn how important the survey design is to the collection, analysis and representation of data through a practical activity.

A short activity which demonstrates the importance of correctly interpreting data. This is a PowerPoint presentation telling the true story of mathematician Abraham Wald. He was employed by the US Army during WW2 to help with the war effort. An excellent activity for students with a range of ability levels. The information is from “How Not to be Wrong: The Hidden Maths of Everyday Life” by Jordan Ellenberg. I found it an excellent read and would recommend to all maths teachers.

Page 1 is a table of the 3 different ways to solve a basic right-angled triangle trigonometry problem. Page 2 is a flowchart working through the steps.

This is a worksheet on calculating 50% and 25% of quantities. It also includes swapping the percentage with the amount eg. calculating 16% of 50 by changing it to 50% of 16, then dividing 16 by 2. There are several challenge questions at the end of the worksheet to help with differentiating the lesson. Some examples and brief explanations are also included so students can work through independently.

Play part of Can’t Help falling in Love by Elvis to help investigate the effect of increasing every score in a data set by a constant on the mean and standard deviation of the data set.

The worksheet has 3 examples of a common skill from which the student needs to look carefully to see what to do. Then they have similar questions to answer. The activity aims to get students to slow down and actually think about what is happening rather than just giving up if they don’t understand something straight away.

The worksheet has 3 examples of a common skill from which the student needs to look carefully to see what to do. Then they have similar questions to answer. The activity aims to get students to slow down and actually think about what is happening rather than just giving up if they don’t understand something straight away.