A nice little starter for a fractions lesson. You show 4 images on the board, three of them show the same fraction, one does not. The students have to work out what the fraction is, and then decide which fraction is the odd one out. They must state their reason. I am working on more images for this and will put them on here, and Mentor4Maths website when complete.

I have always found it difficult to tutor negative numbers adding and subtracting without saying, "two negatives make a positive". Then when I was at university I was taught a way to show negative numbers with + - signs like in science, as it is common that a child would be taught about positive and negative charges in science. Unfortunately this didn't work too well with a year 6 pupil I tutored. I then decided to adapt this method and put positive and negative signs onto some cubes, this way the pupil could physically see what was happening. The pupil much preferred 'hands on' methods anyway and found this easier to understand. Therefore I thank the person who came up with the original idea which enabled me to adapt it to my pupils.

For this resource, students need to be in pairs. In their pairs they need to have access to a computer, all pictures printed off and the inequality slides printed. There is a table containing facts about each of the attractions and two blank rows for the students to find their own facts out about the attractions. They then work together to placing the pictures into the inequality. Alternatively, after studying the information provided and inserting other facts, one person can put two cards in the inequality and the other can guess the fact. This ensures the student practices their place value with the inequality rules, they will also need to be able to convert feet to metres and miles, minutes and seconds to hours to ensure that they are comparing facts correctly.

I have been asked to create some functional skills resources to help those completing apprenticeships in hospitality. This is a restaurant advertising task, where the student is asked to work out the total cost to advertise, split the cost between each department and then work out if it has made any difference. This involves money, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, ratio and percentages. I am currently working on more like this, so keep a look out for them. This resource is available in word (so you can modify), pdf and as a presentation.

For this resource a student is asked to work out the fraction of a picture. Students could discuss how they would work it out in pairs. You could modify this and ask questions such as, "Which colour is the greatest percentage of the picture?". As part of the attachment there are other pictures, feel free to modify the questions in the powerpoint.

This is just another way of looking at prime factor decomposition, as roots of a flower. The resource could be adapted to put different numbers in.

This power point resource has two activities, the first asks the students which is the correct answer and the next asks the students to play the part of being a teacher and they have to mark the answers. This activity could be done as a starter or a main task, it identifies misconceptions within this topic. I would suggest this to be done in pairs which ensures any discrepancies are discussed between pairs and with the whole class. Check out https://mentor4maths.wordpress.com/ for updated daily resources over the summer.

For this activity the students are asked to think of a number, then follow the path to the end. They can choose which way they wish to go completing the actions as they go along. If they have answered correctly and followed the correct path they should always end with the answer being 1o bigger than the number they have started with. Once they have seen this they can then prove it algebraically. This could be adapted to multiplication and division, standard form, negative numbers etc.

This resource ask students to really think about and visualize how they can dissect a shape and make it into a square. The students have to work out the total area of the shape and the length of sides needed to make the shape. They will use Pythagoras to work out the missing diagonals needed to make the squares. For an extension activity students can try and make their own shape and dissect it.

Pupils are provided with some lego and a set of instructions. I have purposefully changed the order of the instructions. After following the set of instructions the pupils should have an object that doesn't resemble the picture of the lighthouse. This will open a discussion about why that is, why is the order of the instructions important? Then ask students to work out the correct order of the instructions. How is this related to maths, well the order of operations, (BIDMAS) is very important and hence by following the correct order of instructions you will end up with the correct answer.

This question links volume with quadratic and linear equations, and with unit conversion. The idea behind it is students look at the question which is quite detailed and wordy. There are a series of power point slides to go with this, please search GCSE Style Question - Back to Basics Thanks.

This is a sneak preview for a resource available online for £2.50. The resource includes worked examples, fluency, reasoning questions, error analysis and problem solving. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/dividing-decimals-11709134

A task where you need to rearrange 3 tiles to make the centre of all tiles 100

resource to help visualise equivalent fractions

Just a small resource highlighting the properties of prime numbers and multiplication. To make it easier you could input a few numbers in the circles and ask the pupil to complete the others.

Just a small group of differentiated questions I created for my year 7 class.

This is just a small differentiated resource as part of my planned lessons for year 7 BIDMAS

This resource could be used as a starter to get students to think. The students are asked to match the fraction to the image, answers are provided.

A starter for introducing surds but could be applied to any topic. The idea is that you put on the board a complicated equation/shape etc, and get the students curious. You can ask them what they already know and what they want to know. You can then plan your lessons around their answers.

This is designed to test pupils knowledge of words associated with a particular topic, for this I have used number properties. This could be adapted to other topics and used as an end of unit plenary.