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.

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.

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.

Three “Crack The Safe” activities on standard form and surds (one on simplifying and one on expanding brackets and rationalising the denominator). These contain six questions but six possible answers for each question meaning that students can self-check their answers (are they in the list of possible answers?) whilst the teacher can help those who require it. I use these as starters and plenaries but that is obviously up to you.

Nothing particularly enlightening here other than I found that using function machines to show how to calculate a dimension given the area formula seemed to work quite nicely with a class of mine. This should be a discussion activity in my view.

This designed to help students unravel and solve quite complex equations. It could also lead to in-class discussion and there are templates/blank slides to do your own should you wish. The initial idea came from a colleague (thank you Mr Steve...).

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.

Four screens each with four questions that have the same answer but the question is missing information; can your class work out what information is missing? This is designed to create discussion (some questions have multiple answers possible and can be extended by asking students to find general solutions) and I intend to use these as starters. All these are number based questions involving fractions, percentages, ratio, directed numbers and more. I use these as starters; I put them on the board and students can get straight on with them upon their arrival.

Four screens each with four questions that have the same answer but the question is missing information; can your class work out what information is missing? This is designed to create discussion (some questions have multiple answers possible and can be extended by asking students to find general solutions) and I intend to use these as starters. All these are algebra based questions involving solving equations, inequalities, equations of lines, formulae and more. I use these as starters; I put them on the board and students can get straight on with them upon their arrival.

Just one “Crack The Safe” activity on arithmetic sequences involving finding terms and finding the nth term. These are designed to allow students to self-check whilst the teacher helps those who require it by offering three possible answers for each question so if their answer isn’t there, they must check what they’ve been doing. I use these as starters or plenaries but you can use them how you wish.

I found a graphic on Twitter and thought it would make a nice discussion lesson/part lesson on time and number, possibly standard form. Anyway, I made this Powerpoint to get people started.

This contains 4 solving equations activities of increasing difficulty. This encourages discussion and insists upon students showing their working.

This set of 4 "spiders" takes students through generating a sequence from an nth term, to finding the nth term of an arithmetic sequence to working with some fairly straight forward quadratic and cubic sequences. The concept is designed to encourage discussion.

Three spiders on transformations (both describing and drawing) that getting increasingly challenging from spider 1 to spider 3. Spider 1 contains reflections in the x and y axes, translations and rotations about the origin. Spider 2 contains reflections in horizontal and vertical lines (x=n or y=n), rotations around points away from the origin, and an enlargement. Spider 3 contains reflections in diagonal lines (y=-x), roattions away from the origin and fractional and negative enlargements where the centre is not the origin. They should encourage discussion and I hope the diagrams are large enough (they are as large as I can make them).

Erica is struggling with integrating partial fractions and integrating by parts. Can somebody help her sort it all out? There are only two questions to sort out but they are long ones! This should give students the chance to demonstrate their understanding.

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.

You are an air traffic controller at Metropolis airport and have to plot Superman's course using the equations given and discover where all the villains are.

This is a worksheet to solve quadratics graphically, incuding three horizontal lines (y = a number) and two linear functions in the form y = mx+c. The trapeze artist bit just brings in a touch of "real life". I have left this as a Word document to allow for editing. All graphs need to be plotted by the students. Slly typo corrected!

Four slides each with four questions where they have the answer but not all the information in the question. This is designed to get the students to think and demonstrate their understanding by working backwards from answer to question. These have been quite successful for encouraging discussion in class and being an extension task.

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.