This is designed to encourage students to explain their working rather than just read out an answer at the end. I have given an example of solutions but these are not the only solutions for each. This should encourage discussion too.

Four “show that…” questions that encourage explanations ahead of final answers (which are already given). These are designed to create discussion and get students to think about the steps they are taking.

Answer the proportion questions and reveal the fish-related joke. These are popular in class, both online and in-person, offering those who are fairly confident the opportunity to get on with an answer being revealed whilst the teacher can help those who need it.

Find the missing angles on a line, in triangles, in polygons and parallel lines and find the punchline to the fish-related joke. These have worked nicely in online lessons and in-person lessons before that. Students gain confidence as words appear and teacher can help those who really need it rather than those who just want to check that they are going right.

Find the letters upon which the shapes land on and uncover the joke on a fish theme. These are popular (no matter the quality of the joke) in both online and in-person lessons.

This (hopefully) shows how your skills at factorising and solving quadratics can enable you to solve other non-linear equations. Initially students must solve three straightforward quadratic equations, then look at a number of other equations that are linked to them, using their initial answers to help solve the more complex equations. This moves on to solving more complex equations. This could be a bridging resource between GCSE and A Level as it involves trigonometric and exponential equations.

Some questions involving bounds leading to an aquatic joke; these seem to be popular in the classroom and online, even though the jokes are of a Christmas cracker standard.

I needed something for this topic and this is what popped out. Whilst it is a true or false activity I would expect some good discussions to arise whilst doing this, with conversations along the lines of “how could we make this statement true?” either by changing the wording or the initial algebraic expression. I have found these activities really quite successful in online lessons as well as “normal” lessons.

Six questions based around finding the area of a triangle using trigonometry. The answers are on the sheet which allows students to work with confidence whilst the teacher can help those who require it.

Answer the questions regarding column vectors and reveal the punchline to a cheesy joke; popular in class and online despite the cheesiness of the jokes, which is a surprise if I’m honest!

Six questions all involving the sine rule; the answers appear on the sheet giving the students confidence to continue and allowing any students that require help to get it.

A joke to discover (told to me by a Year 10) having found the resultant vectors sought. These have worked nicely both in class and online.

Three sheets: speed, density, other compound measures The answers are on the sheet so those who are confident can just get whilst the teacher helps those who need it.

Two sheets: one on distance-time (or displacement-time) and one on speed-time Students must decide, using the graph, whether each statement is true or false. These can encourage nice discussions in class.

Two sheets with ten statements on each where the students in your class have to figure out whether they are true or false. One sheet involves a frequency table and the other a grouped frequency. These are designed to encourage discussion in lessons.

Six questions to do and the answers on the sheet (four answers do not match to questions). These sheets allow those students who are confident to get on without asking if answers are correct whilst the teacher helps those who need it.

One sheet with three lines and ten statements about coordinates on the graphs, gradient y-intercept and their equations where students need to decide whether the statements are true or false, correcting the false ones (and explaining where the misconception arose?). These have produced really nice discussion in class and online in my experience.

Three sheets: one on rounding to 1,10,100, one on rounding to decimal places and one on rounding to significant figures. Answers are on the sheet but there are more answers than questions meaning that guessing less of an option and students can get on in the knowledge that their answer should be on the sheet somewhere. These have been useful in online lessons as well as “normal” lessons.

Ten statements about functions that students need to decide whether they are true or false. This involves substituting, inverse, composite and domains so covers most the what they could be faced with in an exam. These have created nice discussions in class for me and I always get them to correct the false statements.

Three sets (based around number properties), ten statements and students need to work out if those statements are true or false. This involves union, intersection, subsets and probability involving sets. I have found that these encourage discussion in class.