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.

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?

Using the "If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club" advert from the 1980s, some maths questions based loosely on it. Designed as a bit of fun and to practise functional maths.

Five questions each on finding a side and finding an angle using the Sine Rule, with gaps to fill in, working forwards and backwards. This was designed as an introduction to the Sine Rule but use it (if you do at all) however you like…

This takes students through factorising quadratics, solving them and onto completing the square, including solving quadratics that won't factorise nicely. Designed as starters/plenaries/assess the learning activities.

This set of two worksheets is designed to force students to show their workings and not use a calculator when simplifying surds. There are straightforward simplifying, expanding brackets and rationalising the denominator with space to write working etc.

The name of these was born out of a typo (obviously) but it’s the usual format: do some maths (solve equations in this case) to find the punchline to a cheesy joke about fish, hence the “codbreaker”. Good for a starter, main activity or a plenary in my experience and the students enjoy finding the punchline, especially being the first to do so. This involves anything from two-step equations to variables on both sides including fractional parts. Number 2 is more challenging than number 1.

Two fish jokes to figure out; the first codbreaker asks students to find prime factors and the second is on finding HCF or LCM. I use these as starters, plenaries and main tasks as they are self-marking; this means that they have been useful for online learning/lessons too.

Summing arithmetic sequences and various other things arithmetic sequence related. The usual answer questions then unjumble the letters to reveal a fish joke. Ideal for in class or at home.

State the inequalities that bound the shaded region and discover the punchline to the fish-related gag. These seem to work either in a classroom, online or as a homework task, encouraging some competition for those who enjoy it.

Two more fish jokes to decipher: one on set notation and one on Venn diagrams. These have worked well for me both in the classroom and online with others using them as homework tasks.

I am going to be teaching Year 7 some surface area of cuboids and cubes but only had one of these involving prisms which might be a step too far at this point. This was what I came up with. The answers are on the sheet (although there are more answers than questions to avoid default answers at the end) which gives students the confidence to keep going if they are getting questions correct allowing the teacher to help those who really need it.

Eight questions with ten possible answers. These allow the students who understand the topic to move on with the confidence of seeing their answers on the sheet (screen for online lessons) whilst the teacher can help those who need it.

Two more rounding-based tasks; answers are on the sheet but more than the number to questions to make guessing less easy but also allow those who have the confidence to continue without the need to ask the teacher to check, allowing the teacher to help those who actually require it. The truncation sheet also contains error intervals.

The usual “answer the questions and reveal the punchline” for some worded questions. This is designed as a task for Year 6 or 7.

Erica’s doing her data collection homework but keeps making mistakes. Can your classes help Erica learn from her mistakes by correcting then and explaining what she has done?

Erica keeps making mistakes on her homework; she needs your class’ help to explain what she’s done wrong so she won’t make the same mistakes again. This involves Venn diagrams, tree diagrams and independence.

Erica’s homework on forces and motion is causing her issues as usual; can your students help Erica correct her mistakes and explain what she’s done incorrectly? Good for classroom discussion.

Designed to be used in the AQA Further Maths Level 2 Certificate but could be used at A Level too. Answer the questions, reveal the punchline to a cheesy joke… the usual nonsense.

This is designed to help introduce factorising of quadratic equations in order to solve them. This should lead to some discussion.