A lesson with a worksheet about the bills that people generally pay. Allows for discussion about earnings and living costs. Goes on to look at what changes people can make to reduce their energy bills to help themselves and the environment. Currently working on the PPT version - all the symbols and formatting got messed up when I exported :(

A quick starter or plenary

A selection of different Maths problems based around the 2018 world cup. From a basic wordsearch up to using Pythagoras to calculate distances between players on a grid. Answers are included for selected slides. This was very much based on a resource produced by Mr Doran for the 2014 world cup and the slides were updated by students. Apologies in advance for any mistakes (I’m sure you will find some) but there seems to be a lack of material out there for this World Cup just now so I thought people might appreciate this even in an imperfect state. Hope it’s useful to you! UPDATE: the wordsearch definitely does not work!!! Mexico and Brazil are missing at least, maybe others. The students are delighted that their work is being used by so many, please do leave a review if you have time!

Seven puzzles, each has 3 quadratics (all are monic, last puzzle uses difference of 2 squares) to factorise, each factor gives a letter towards an anagram. Kids can solve these without factorising properly - they don’t normally realise this though, and it makes a nice discussion point at the end.

Students substitute positive integers into 2-step expressions. Double sided worksheet, 15 puzzles altogether. Each puzzle has 10 expressions to substitute into. Good for getting kids to do lots of mental calculations and using BIDMAS when substituting values.

Made for a top set year 9 using the June 2017 GCSE exam, with a couple of Christmassy questions thrown in (All credit to HannahJoy21 for the Maths Vegas concept - she is brilliant!)

I’m using these bits and pieces for a classroom display and thought they might be useful to someone else. There are name banners, photos and some wordy paragraphs about why each person is inspirational to me. They’ll need printing, trimming, backing, etc - and you may wish to edit my ramblings!! People included: Stormzy, Lenny Henry, Malorie Blackman, Alan Turing, Katie Bouman, Hans Rosling, Frida Khalo, Malala Yousefzai, Greta Thunberg, Ellen DeGeneres, Stephen Hawking, Barack Obama.

Pupils find the path from start to finish, only using blocks that are in the correct form. As an extension, I get them to go through and mark what's wrong with the other squares (things like two digits before the decimal point, it's not 10 to the power, etc) Works as a quick plenary for an able group. Sorry it's only handwritten and scanned!

My low ability year 7 do this starter each Monday to try and incorporate some real-life Maths into their lessons. There's a sheet for each week of this half term.

I did this with a very weak year 10 group, so it has lots of different activities to keep them engaged. It took 3 lessons to get through, with some numeracy starters added in. The two extra files are for students to complete in an IT room. We watched 5 mins of Supersize vs Superskinny if they were good. :)

Various Maths Vegas quizzes for the couple of days, reviewing the term’s topics. Y7 was for top set - includes rounding to sf, decimal calculations, simplifying algebra (collect like terms and expand brackets), polygons, constructing triangles Y8 was for bottom set - includes collecting like terms, expanding brackets, factors, Y11 was for a foundation group, covers a complete mishmash of topics. I think the question numbers are a mess, but the questions are all there!

Students choose which of the two answers is correct. Covers lots of common misconceptions. The Y8 version is a simplified version for a bottom set.

Kids find which numbers are factors of the target, then rearrange the corresponding letters to make a country. (A shameless copied idea from the brilliant factors and multiples football team worksheet!)

Lesson and worksheets for finding volume of different 3D objects (cuboid, cone, pyramid, hemisphere, etc). Lower ability uses consistent units, middle uses mixed units, higher requires solving to find missing lengths. This lesson is aimed at providing context for these calculations - using different 3D objects to model the size of a lake and then calculating the reduction in volume (and therefore fish) over time to consider the impact on local communities. All feedback welcome! (I know it needs an answer sheet, I’ll do this and upload when I can)

Students match inequalities with the integers that satisfy them. (This sheet always take them a lot longer than I think it will!) I normally start this task by writing 5,6,7 and 5,6,7… on the board and asking if they mean the same thing - it helps them get the idea of one-sided and two-sided inequalities

A lot of basic questions (all the triangles are right angles, no slanted lengths given). The answers can then be found on the diagram and joined up dot-to-dot style to create a dinosaur.

A really quick display - A4 sheets of 12 Mathematicians that you can just print out and staple up. Mine is titled “The Great Mathematicians” and we refer to it quite often in class. It’s designed to tackle the issue of diverse classes not seeing themselves represented in the people they learn about, so it includes a mix of genders and ethnicities. Inspired by Project Mathematician, which is worth a google if you have a minute.

This is a series of lessons about pie charts, starting with matching popular chocolate bars with pie charts of their ingredients, moving on to drawing your own pie charts, and then onto who makes the money in the chocolate industry so students can debate the fairness/equality of the system. Good for ticking those SMSC and real-world links boxes.