All you need to have a lesson based on rolling one die and recording the outcomes. I’ve done this activity as part of circus of many activities in a lesson (Other circus activities listed on my TES Resources pages) but you can make a whole lesson out of this depending on what you are trying to achieve. Many different versions of the task sheets. Look at them all and decide on the best to suit your learners. Several different versions of Excel Spreadsheets to record the results on - including one which I can’t remember how it works (the RANDOM one). If you find it useful please leave a helpful review. Thanks

I've used random name choosers (RNC) for some time. SMART Notebook has a good one (It's a random word generator - you just put in the names of the students in the class). I came up with this idea after a student said "Can I pass the question?" and I replied "Not unless you have a pass card!" He then drew a pass card on his whiteboard and tried to pass it again! What we have are a variety of pass cards produced. The rules were written down for me to make sure I stuck to them and for consistency. Basically students can earn pass cards which then excuse them from answering questions when the random name chooser selects them. There is probably no educational value in doing this - it's just fun and it's very engaging for them. It's also quite funny when the class all pass all their questions to the class clown to answer (watch out for bullying though!) Students can earn pass cards for anything which you want to reward. The other way of doing this came from an INSET session where the facilitator asked us all to look under our seats for a prize. 200 teachers all looked under the seats. We all laughed (Not) as he said there was nothing to find there but he proved the point about the engagement of coming in to the lesson and seeing if you had a pass card! Hence the wallet size pass cards are simply blu tacked to the underside of a seat. You can choose (at random) whose seat to stick it under or you could just put it under someone you want to get involved more (as they will become the class center of attraction when they are picked by the RNC). I had students coming in asap during break to see if they had a pass card under the seat! I'd like to use it again however the head in my current school says that the school reward systems are to be used and these cards add an additional layer to the systems. I think that they can supplement the school systems and you can tailor them so that they fit within the school systems.

This is a really good resource of over 40 challenging questions which will get your students thinking and discussing their answers and methods. When you are being observed (well anytime really but...) you need to be going around the groups challenging them on their thinking. Obviously there is only one of you so it's good if you can give them the prompts for their discussions. These resources will help this. I have been told many times that a lesson plan should contain detail of the key questions which you are going to ask during the lesson. Some of these questions were put on my last observed lesson plan and it showed that I had thought about what I was trying to achieve from the students. The original file I created was the Publisher file which has five key questions which I printed on A4 and gave one copy to each table of four. One student then challenges questions to the other three. You can move this role around the table. This work quite successfully but it relies on a certain amount of routine from the students so it does require you training them. Recently I've collected a load of questions to add into the list. I've tried to be comprehensive to cover many different circumstances. There are a few similar to each other but I've added much to each one to try to develop the understanding. They are presented in a table format so it would be easy for you to pick out the questions you most want to ask and amend them if needed. Alternatively you could print out & cut up the cards and then simply pick out the ones you want. I have also now just picked out the eight questions myself from the list of 41 and put on A4 ready for printing onto card. These are probably the ones I would use. I would give each table a set of eight questions and each student would have to pick two cards which they would then either challenge themselves on or use to challenge the others. I think that this is a good resource and I'll be grateful if you could write a positive review if you find it useful. Thank you.

Originally I used this as a short 10 minute activity as part of a whole lesson of many circus activities (many other of my circus activities are listed on TES resources) however you can easily build a whole lesson around it. "Will it snow this Christmas?" is the question. First just ask this question. Then give them the last five years weather data. Make a choice again. Then give more data from last 24 years. Then ask them to make a choice again. Then give them the answer sheet. This is a good activity to provide lots of discussion. If you put the cards into sealed envelopes then it adds to the engagement and hence motivation. Its the sort of activity which looks great when being observed - particularly if you get some good discussion. You may wish to edit the city names to somewhere near your school. I made up the data but you could easily find the records of a city on the web. You may need a discussion about what constitutes snowing on Christmas day (e.g. snow flakes falling on the roof of the local BBC news building). You could bring in about how people bet on this happening. It may be worth adding in some question prompts like: How do you know this? Why do you think that? Are you absolutely sure? Can you prove it? Can you now explain to me why you think that! What evidence do you have about that one? You could put these prompts onto cards and ensure the students use them during the activity.

This is a top idea which I've used many times and I think it really does provide some great discussion. The probability of it snowing tomorrow is not 1/2 as it doesn't snow very often. However students often think that as the choice is either "snow" or "not snow" so the chance of it snowing must be a half. The activities here are designed to address this misconception. Originally I used this as a short 10 minute activity as part of a whole lesson of many circus activities (many other of my circus activities are listed on TES resources) however you can easily build a whole lesson around it. The activity has nine discussion questions to decide if they are true or false. The PowerPoint is simply those questions so that you can display them to discuss them as a class. The WS is good for a homework or as a classwork exercise to get something in the book. Alternatively you could simply ask them to choose one of the questions to write into their books and then describe in detail the answer. The Mr Wrong questions are useful as starters next lesson or plenaries today. You could easily amend the questions within in them to suit the point you are trying to make with your learners. The label is obvious. The A5 asks the student to choose which Mr Wrong is wrong (the other is right) and the A4 has two versions. The A4 can be used in many ways. E.g. You can ask them to write four statements (where one is true and the rest is false) and then they pass to another student to work it out. Alternatively you could write on the statements and they could identify the right and wrong ones. You can change the statements. For example on the A5 you could make both statements false (catches them out Ha Ha!) Enjoy. Please do leave feedback if you found it useful. Thank you.

Just a load of keywords for posters and displays. There's a simple short "Circus" type activity task as well (I have other Circus activities listed). The graded keywords may help you as I've tried to differentiate them. Any of these words can be printed out and laminated on A5 size cards for the "SNATCH MATCH" game. This is where the words are blu tacked to the wall and students stand a metre away. Teacher (or a TA or competent pupil) asks questions where the answer is one of the snatch match cards. The students are usual;ly in two teams facing the wall. Two students at a time have the opportunity to snatch the right card. Loads of fun!

mgh168 has come up with a superb engaging innovation on the classic two dice problem. I've used a couple of times over the last few days with several different classes and so here are some of the resources I've created. You can find the original TES resource "China River Crossing. Sample Space.Probability" by mgh168. The China River Game is very good and these files then take the students on from it. There is some data from a class and what dice scores they got - the spreadsheet can be easily amended to collect your class data. The Circus sheet is a task sheet for them to prompt discussion on outcomes - I have done this as a short 10 minute activity as a part of a whole lesson of students moving around many probability 'circus' activities. The Pier sheet can be printed onto A3 for the China game. The fact sheet will be useful. The ChinaBoatWS is useful for taking the understanding further. See the PowerPoint of the images of 10 student sample layouts on the piers. The Dice Bingo is a very good plenary/review. It's amazing how many students still insist on putting 12 on it. I also did the original experiment of rolling the two dice and looking at the scores. A SMART notebook is included for doing this including a graph WS for recording the scores. It's all free so download and you'll see what all the files are as they are obvious when you open them. If you find it useful do visit my TES shop and see my other resources on TES including many premium resources which I hope will save you lots of preparation time. Anything you like please do leave a review. Thanks

This idea came from "andorian" who has a worksheet to prompt discussion. I then recorded the students ideas on this PowerPoint. Afterwards they made a "This is now a phone free school" poster. It's not that good a resource and its certainly not worth putting a price on it but it may help you and make things a bit easier for your lesson. Hope it helps

This is pretty simple (hence it's free) as all it is 4 worksheets for the students to use... Give each pair worksheet 1. Each player in turn rolls the dice, records the score and then adds up their running total. Once you've got a winner then let them play game two where it is done with two dice... and so on All the worksheet does is provide a template for them to write into. You could adapt it by using dice with more than six sides - go look in you Maths Resource cupboard and see what's in there! ... I found some 10, 12 and 20 sided dice.

Fun exercise for many age ranges. Will provide a good amount of discussion and is a nice next step after estimating and experimental probabilities. Originally I used this as one short activity in a "Circus" of many activities which students go around the room playing on. (More of my Circus Activities are uploaded on my TES resources elsewhere). There are several versions of the task here which you can adapt for your learners. The basic idea is that you give a sheet of card with a grid printed onto it. Players roll coins on to the card and if the coins land so that the side sides of the coin are not touching the sides they win. One idea is you give them a variety of size grids (e.g. grid A and grid B) where the coins do or don't fit in easily. I prepare a set of game boards (A & B) for each pair of students and give them a money bag with 7 plastic toy coins in (1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1). You could use real money or even £2 coins if you have them. 2p is a large coin but isn't worth much so its makes it hard to win, but if you only win your stake back then you don't win much. £2 is a large coin and is worth lots so its makes it hard to win, but if you only win your stake back then you win loads. If you are doing this as a 10 minute circus activity then keep it simple. If you are doing it as a more extended piece of work then use the updated task sheet which asks the students to work out how to make the most money. Higher students will need encouragement to keep the game rules simple. Lower students will need encouragement to keep it really simple. You may choose to give them a reduced version of the problem. You can see that I then for the next lesson typed their suggestions into a worksheet which they then started the next lesson by answering the worksheet. I think there is a lot of potential here to really develop the idea of how to test the games... e.g. they need to try 100 goes with each size coin, etc. The activity certainly gets them discussing whether games are 'attractive' to play and so will bring in more money. The students usually feel that a high prize will make people want to play - even if the game is difficult to win. You could easily extend this activity into GCSE level maths to work out the profits possible.

Fun exercise for many age ranges. Will provide a good amount of discussion and is a nice next step after calculating probabilities to then progressing on to dependent events. Originally I used this as one short activity in a "Circus" of many activities which students go around the room playing on. (More of my Circus Activities are uploaded on my resources elsewhere) Print out the resources enough for each group (I split the class into pairs) but put the Tree Diagram on A3 for tables of 4 to complete. Each group needs a picture of a bowl on A4 and a selection of fruit (I printed out 9 pieces of fruit per A4 using "Windows Photo Printing"). Ideally laminate these for durability. Try to get the fruit on equal size cards so that they can be turned face down and chosen at random. First give them all the task sheet - you could always laminate these so that they use dry wipe markers so that they could play it twice. The task is pick a piece of fruit at random and then record it in the table and then calculate the probability of getting what's left. This is usually enough of an activity to do in a "Circus" however its a good intro for tree diagrams hence the work on tree diagrams as well. Note that the SMART Notebook has the fruit images already added in the attachments as a gallery file. The SMART Notebook file has a variety of different size tree diagrams - you could choose which students to give the smaller (easier to complete) to. I've included a few tree diagram templates for your use.

Really fun exercise for many age ranges. Originally I used this as one activity in a "Circus" of many activities which students go around the room playing on. (More of my Circus Activities are uploaded on my resources elsewhere) Print out the resources enough for each group (I split the class into pairs). Make up a bag of coloured counters for each pair. I used headphone bags from the music room, but any non see through draw string bag will do. I used "Multilink" coloured cubes. For ease I gave every pair the same number and colour of cubes in their bags - they each had 1 pink, 3 yellow and six blue cubes. You could easily vary the cubes in each bag. Have a whole class discussion before you start about what they think will be in the bags (you show them a couple of trials). Reinforce that they will spoil the "game" if they look in the bag (if anyone does look they need to be dealt with quickly in case they share the solution around the room). Then let them play and as time goes on discuss with all the tables about what they think is in the bag. At some point bring it to an end and then get them to start working out an estimate of the probabilities. Meanwhile collect in everyone's results and display on the Excel spreadsheet on your projection screen. Have a discussion about what's in the bag. They will be able to make quite a good guess about how many cubes are in the bag and should be able to come up with the ratios of each colour. It's quite fun at the early stages when some tables don't pull out a particular colour which everyone else has. There are two versions of the tally table. You can decide whether to let them know what colours are possibly in or not tell them.. it may then be possible for one colour which they have to never appear in their trial. The spreadsheet has got the results from my lesson however like all the files they all can easily be adapted for your own learners. Enjoy

A card match exercise made for knowing the correct terms for interpreting graphs (especially for Science)

Handling Data Keywords Word Search

Use these for pupils to stick into their books after graph drawings so that they take responsibility for checking their graphs are complete

Probability Tree Diagram Template Worksheets A4

46 Files Bumper Huge Massive Resource Pack on Angles

Massive Resource Bundle Pythagoras Shape and Space Mastery Magenta Principles

A big lesson resource - 102 pages for teaching Pythagoras from first concepts through to 3D

Four Versions of a Transformations Key word word search. - each of a different size so you can give them out according to how fast each learner is.