Lots of equations involving brackets to match up to their answers.

Earliest recommended Year group: Year 8. Bisect the sides of a quadrilateral to get a parallelogram. All quadrilaterals are different but all parallelograms are identical. The grid allows easy bisection This is from the “Something in Common” collection of resources by John Burke. They allow consolidation of key skills, prevent students from copying each other (as all the questions are different), make marking and assessing easy for the teacher (as all the answers are the same!), and provide a lovely extra challenge for students as they try to figure out exactly what is going on! To access the full collection, and read John’s background notes, please visit: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/common.htm

A tricky puzzle, to really get pupils thinking. Great as a group task. Students have to use geometrical reasoning to find unknown lengths and work out the area of various triangles and quadrilaterals.

This a rich, Arithmagon activity on highest common factor, linking in lowest common multiple and prime numbers. I love Arithmagons as they allow consolidation of key topics when going Forwards, and then opportunities for extension, creativity and discovery when working Backwards. They are also really easy to modify to suit the particular needs of your class. For all the Arithmagon activities in this series, together with teaching notes and extra information, please visit http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/arithmagon.htm

Using ICT in Maths. The 45th in Mr Barton's Autograph Video tutorial series. This week we continue our look at the world of 2D graphing by examining how we can use the tangent tool and the gradient function to investigate quadratic curves. This offers a slick way of illustrating why two quadratic curves have the same gradient function. Clicking on the web-link you can see all the videos in this series.

Earliest recommended Year group: Year 9. Bisect the sides of a quadrilateral to get a parallelogram. All quadrilaterals are different but all parallelograms are identical. A compass will be needed to bisect the sides. This is from the “Something in Common” collection of resources by John Burke. They allow consolidation of key skills, prevent students from copying each other (as all the questions are different), make marking and assessing easy for the teacher (as all the answers are the same!), and provide a lovely extra challenge for students as they try to figure out exactly what is going on! To access the full collection, and read John’s background notes, please visit: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/common.htm

Have a play around with this task, and please share any questions, extensions, simplifications, modifications, or lines of inquiry in the comment box below. The idea is to collect loads of suggestions that can then be used for effective differentiation. The full set of these tasks, along with additional notes, can be found here: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/richtasks.htm

This is a “Tarsia: Convince Me” activity on substituting into a formula Unlike standard Tarsia activities, here you only need to print out the solution (included on the PowerPoint), and students must: 1. Find (at least) 5 incorrectly matched up elements, convince you that each one is incorrect explaining the mistake that has been made, and then decide what the answer should have been 2. Replace the ? with the correct answer 3. Come up with a question to replace ?? that could give the answer. A selection of these questions can then be given to other students to use as a rich, challenging, pupil-created homework. To access all my updated Tarsia jigsaw activities, including the Convince Me series, as well as teacher notes and more, please visit http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/jigsaw.htm

This is a “Tarsia: Convince Me” activity on Reverse Percentages. Unlike standard Tarsia activities, here you only need to print out the solution (included on the PowerPoint), and students must: 1. Find (at least) 5 incorrectly matched up elements, convince you that each one is incorrect explaining the mistake that has been made, and then decide what the answer should have been 2. Replace the ? with the correct answer 3. Come up with a question to replace ?? that could give the answer. A selection of these questions can then be given to other students to use as a rich, challenging, pupil-created homework. To access all my updated Tarsia jigsaw activities, including the Convince Me series, as well as teacher notes and more, please visit http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/jigsaw.htm

This is a “Tarsia: Convince Me” activity on adding fractions Unlike standard Tarsia activities, here you only need to print out the solution (included on the PowerPoint), and students must: 1. Find (at least) 5 incorrectly matched up elements, convince you that each one is incorrect explaining the mistake that has been made, and then decide what the answer should have been 2. Replace the ? with the correct answer 3. Come up with a question to replace ?? that could give the answer. A selection of these questions can then be given to other students to use as a rich, challenging, pupil-created homework. To access all my updated Tarsia jigsaw activities, including the Convince Me series, as well as teacher notes and more, please visit http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/jigsaw.htm

This is a “Tarsia: Convince Me” activity on BIDMAS / Order of Operations Unlike standard Tarsia activities, here you only need to print out the solution (included on the PowerPoint), and students must: 1. Find (at least) 5 incorrectly matched up elements, convince you that each one is incorrect explaining the mistake that has been made, and then decide what the answer should have been 2. Replace the ? with the correct answer 3. Come up with a question to replace ?? that could give the answer. A selection of these questions can then be given to other students to use as a rich, challenging, pupil-created homework. To access all my updated Tarsia jigsaw activities, including the Convince Me series, as well as teacher notes and more, please visit http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/jigsaw.htm

A short video explaining how you can use the amazing free screen capture software, Jing, to record videos and upload them to TES. Jing is particularly useful if you want to record a series of instructions for students, or the answers to an exam paper, or provide details of homework. The videos can be downloaded, or viewed online, all completely freely!

Triangle and quadrilateral, angle properties, opposite angles, angles on a straight line and full turn. Bingo questions where the answers rely on knowledge of angle facts. A set of bingo cards is also provided. the winner is the first student to cross off all their numbers.

A Tarsia activity on finding the percentage of an amount. These type of activities can be used to consolidate understanding of a given topic, and foster positive group work and co-operative learning. For more ideas on how to use these types of activities (including twists!) and to download the latest version of the wonderful free software to open this resource (and create your own), just click on the web-link. If you have any comments, or spot any (non deliberate!) mistakes, please share them below. Many thanks to all the teachers who have helped me assemble these Tarsias over the years.

A Tarsia activity on linear sequences (nth term rule). These type of activities can be used to consolidate understanding of a given topic, and foster positive group work and co-operative learning. For more ideas on how to use these types of activities (including twists!) and to download the latest version of the wonderful free software to open this resource (and create your own), just click on the web-link. If you have any comments, or spot any (non deliberate!) mistakes, please share them below. Many thanks to all the teachers who have helped me assemble these Tarsias over the years.

Earliest recommended Year group: Year 11. This tests the pupils knowledge of straight line graphs and y=mx+c and the significance of gradients of perpendicular lines. This is from the “Something in Common” collection of resources by John Burke. They allow consolidation of key skills, prevent students from copying each other (as all the questions are different), make marking and assessing easy for the teacher (as all the answers are the same!), and provide a lovely extra challenge for students as they try to figure out exactly what is going on! To access the full collection, and read John’s background notes, please visit: http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/common.htm

generates random straight line graphs and asks pupils to name the gradient, intercept and equation. could also be used the other way around by getting students to draw the line given the equation

A starter involving a 1-100 number square.

A brilliant Tarsia activity by Gill Hillitt on algebraic fractions. These type of activities can be used to consolidate understanding of a given topic, and foster positive group work and co-operative learning. For more ideas on how to use these types of activities (including twists!) and to download the latest version of the wonderful free software to open this resource (and create your own), just click on the web-link. If you have any comments or feedback for Gill, please share them below.

A Tarsia activity on revising the key skills of Algebra. These type of activities can be used to consolidate understanding of a given topic, and foster positive group work and co-operative learning. For more ideas on how to use these types of activities (including twists!) and to download the latest version of the wonderful free software to open this resource (and create your own), just click on the web-link. If you have any comments, or spot any (non deliberate!) mistakes, please share them below. Many thanks to all the teachers who have helped me assemble these Tarsias over the years.