Find the roots as complex numbers and reveal the punchline to a cheesy joke. Something different to ploughing through text book exercises…

Simplify the complex numbers (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing) to reveal the “hilarious” punchline. Good for something different…?

Four of these sheets covering: capacity, mass and length plus one true or false activity involving problems with all three which should encourage discussion in class and force students to read the question carefully if nothing else. These have worked well in class and online allowing the teacher to help those who need it whilst other get on, reassured that their answers are on the sheet.

Two true or false activities: one on Venn diagrams including probability and one on shading regions of Venn diagrams with both using set notation. Students decide and discuss whether the answers given are true or false. These have worked successfully in real-life and online lessons for me.

Some equations and inequalities to solve, using sketches where possible, to reveal the cheesy joke. I will be using this as a starter.

I say polynomials but actually I could only really use cubics, but there you go. Answer the questions (given one real root) and reveal the hilarious joke… I actually quite like this one (so did my form group).

Three sheets on error intervals and bounds (including calculations). There are six questions but ten possible answers to choose from so students can’t guess but can check if their answer is correct.

Answer the questions, reveal the (cheesy) joke. These allow those students who are confident to get on and find their answers on the sheet whilst the teacher helps those who require it.

I felt like doing an A Level codebreaker and this seemed like a good topic to start with. Use laws of logarithms to reveal the punchline to a cheesy joke…

Fill in the blanks to reveal the punchline to the cheesy joke. These seem popular with students and can be used as a main task, starter or plenary but you have a brain and don’t need me to tell you how to structure your lessons!

Differentiate the expressions to reveal the punchline to a cheesy joke. I will probably use this as a starter but you can use it however you like…

The usual: complete the questions correctly to reveal the punchline to a joke. This involves chain rule, product rule and quotient rule.

Answer the questions (including algebraic ones) to reveal the punchline. Ideal for starters, plenaries or a main activity and the students seem to enjoy them.

Find the invariant points, reveal the punchline to a cheesy joke… Useful for starters, plenaries and main tasks in my experience but use (or don’t use) however you like.

Integrate the expressions, reveal the punchline… This includes “reverse chain rule”, one integration by parts and where the differential of the denominator is the numerator. A useful starter?

The usual: answer the questions to reveal the punchline to the joke. Can be used in starters, plenaries, main tasks and homeworks!

Based on the daytime gameshow where one question has three options: one correct, one incorrect but correct in a different context, one impossible (wrong). This is designed to test students’ knowledge then their reasoning to find which are the incorrect and impossible answers and why. Topics include: area, angles (parallel lines and polygons), circle theorems, vectors, transformations and more. There are 12 questions…

Two versions: one with words listed and one without. Use the words to complete the sentences.

Complete the calculations, solve the anagrams and find the punchline for a joke! A couple of typos corrected now.

Find the words in the wordsearch then complete the sentences using them. I'd use this as a "plenary" but don't let that influence you.