Having been asked to help some students (Years 9 and 10) who lacked confidence in class I decided to write these four sheets that we will go through together; the questions are designed to get increasingly difficult and to encourage questions and discussion. There are also various answers for some of the questions, another chance for a mathematical discussion. Topics covered include simplifying expressions, indices, expanding brackets (and therefore factorising) and basic algebraic fractions. The questions are varied in the hope of not allowing students to get into a rut and answer without thinking carefully. I have also introduced the word and symbol “identity”. I hope it is useful.

Six matching activities: 1 mode, 1 median, 1 mean, 1 mixture (all include frequency tables), 2 grouped data. These are designed to be starters or plenaries but could be used as a whole lesson activity if you wish.

Six questions with ten possible answers so students can self-mark these questions (if their answer is not an option they need to check what they did). This involves facts about 2D and 3D shapes including edges, vertices, number of sides etc. I would use this as starter or plenary.

These are calculation pyramids but they give a punchline to a joke. These are designed to be done without a calculator but it is clearly up to you.

Find the formulae to calculate how many Snickers bars Mr T fires at the walker and the swimmer. Starts off with numerical problems then moves onto general formulae.

Answer the questions, swap the numbers for letters and unjumble them to find my next destination.

Enlarge the shapes, form the punchline to a terrible joke. This involves negative and fractional scale factors where it’s possible.

This gives you a calculation at the centre of each of four “spiders”; students then have to use the central calculation to fill in the blanks using their knowledge of place value. Some blanks are answers are answers to a calculation, some are questions where they are given the answer. This is designed to avoid students getting in to a rut regarding these questions and make them think about their answers.

I was asked to come up with some Olympic themed lessons so came up with four, each getting increasingly difficult. One was on drawing statistical graphs based upon medals tables, one on a race track (basically area and perimeter), one on speed and one on parabolas. Tuck in if you think they will be of any use.

I now teach enlargements using the vector method and decided to produce a worksheet to encourage this method, which involves fractional and negative scale factors.

Answer the questions, reveal the punchline; this old chestnut once again! It includes ascending and descending sequences.

The usual thing: answer the questions, reveal the punchline. This gives inequalities and asks students to find the representation on the number lines. The letters are jumbled up to stop them guessing the answer.

Four maths "spiders" of increasing difficulty designed to make students think a littel. Tne first two allow students to invent their own original expressions which should lead to good discussion in class where students demonstrate the depth of their understanding. This does get on to expanding brackets and simplifying.

Six different "spiders" moving through rectangles, triangles, trapeziums, circles and compound shapes. These are designed to prevent students hgetting in to a rut when answering questions and to encourage discussion. Ideally used as starter or plenary but could be used as a set of questions to consolidate new learning.

This is a set of questions finding upper and lower bounds using a technique given to me by a colleague in calling the number you are finding the bounds for a house and working out where the fences are. I have found this technique really popular with children and better than anything I was doing before. I hope you like it too.

This is designed to get students to think about algebra and substitution as well as knowing properties of number. This is looking at what you can substitute into an expression or a formula (so that rearranging is involved) to produce a given property. This is intended to create discussion and each question has multiple answers, some of which could be generalised therefore creating extra challenge for those who require it.

This covers reflections, rotations, translations and enlargements (negative and fractional scale factors) and combinations. Some they have to describe, some they have to draw.

Clive is doing some vectors work this time and is confused once again. Can you check all his answers, correct them and explain where he's gone wrong. He's made some typical mistakes which should get everyone (students and teacher) talking.

This is designed as a starter/plenary and should encourage discussion in the room. It works through from basic simplifying to add/subtracting to simplifying with quadratics as the numerator and denominator. There are 8 in total.

Another installment in my US Crime drama activities series, this time using "Without A Trace" and symmetry and transformations (get it?!). Pick the shapes with the given symmetrical properties then follow the transformation instructions to find the missing person. It involves symmetry (reflective and rotational), reflection, rotation and translation.