Six questions all involving the sine rule; the answers appear on the sheet giving the students confidence to continue and allowing any students that require help to get it.

Ten statements about functions that students need to decide whether they are true or false. This involves substituting, inverse, composite and domains so covers most the what they could be faced with in an exam. These have created nice discussions in class for me and I always get them to correct the false statements.

I wanted an extension for a class on solving quadratics; this is what occurred. There are 6 questions and 10 possible answers. These seem to work quite well and this will hopefully get them thinking.

The famous advert from the 80s and some maths questions involving capacity amongst other things.

Three slides with different differentiation problems. The first asks students to differentiate, find a gradient and equation of a tangent at the given point; the second asks the same but the equation of the normal at the given point; the third asks students to find the turning/stationary points. I have thrown in a bit of integration (by stealth) as well just as a challenge… and this could be used for IGCSE or A/AS Level.

Ten questions of increasing difficulty (you can choose which you tackle) where four potential answers are given; one answer is correct (your class can find this) and three answers are incorrect and your class needs to work out how they got it incorrect. Ideal for mathematical discussions. This involves simplifying, rationalising and expanding brackets.

Ten questions, each answered by four people. One of them has got the answer correct, the other three have got it wrong. Students find who got the answer correct then try to figure out what the others did wrong. This should lead to some nice discussion as either a starter or plenary, but you can clearly use it however you like.

Four slides of four questions where you are given the answer but the question is missing some important information. Students must work out what information would work there; some have just one answer, some have many answers. This is designed for students to demonstrate their understanding and to create discussion.

Students are give the answers but there are parts missing in the question; students must decide what should go in the blanks. This should cater for all ages and abilities at secondary (and some primary) and lead to discussion in classrooms. There are four slides of four questions and suggested values/expressions.

Another fish joke discovered having written and simplified some algebraic fractions as a single fractions. Ideal for starters, plenaries, main tasks and homeworks; they are surprisingly popular given the standard of joke…

Solve the problems involving time and find the punchline to the fish-related joke. Useful as a classroom activity, online or as a homework.

Another music-based joke to work out; this involves percentage of a number, percentage change and reverse percentages. Popular in class and online; the music concept from a student I teach!

Lionel is a great mathematician but won’t write any workings. He keeps losing marks as a result. Can you give full solutions so that Lionel understands how he can achieve full marks?

Lionel’s pretty good at Maths but shows no workings whatsoever; this means he gets very few marks even though he gets stuff correct or partly correct. Students need to show Lionel how to write a full solution so he can maximise his marks. The whole point of this is to get students discussing the steps to a successful solution. This involves forming and solving equations, substitution and algebraic fractions amongst other things.

Lionel is still refusing to writing any workings so your students need to show him the way. He is tackling trigonometry, bearings, parallel lines and speed (measures, which I know could come under Number but…)

Three slides, each with four questions of increasing difficulty that use percentages. Students are expected to use percentages situations where they wouldn’t always be found like substitution, polygons, averages and more.

Erica is having a go at her constant acceleration homework but is making a few mistakes. Your students’ job is to correct the errors and explain why she made them. Useful for some discussion in class.

There are four slides, each with four questions (one involving algebra, two on geometry, one on data) of increasingly difficult questions involving ratio in contexts you would not usually see them. Topics covered include angles facts, circle theorems, trigonometry, probability and others. The song with this one is Madness album track but also the title of a film they did about how the group started…

Six questiopns where students are given the answer but have to show the workings. There are two “challenge” questions but this is designed to force students to explain what they are doing mathematically.

Find the missing coordinates on the functions to reveal the punchline to a joke. Most involve linear functions but there are others towards the end; the challenge increases as the questions progress. Useful as a starter, plenary or main task and students seem to enjoy finding the punchlines.