Can students use the clues to work out the numbers and form the joke. These have been popular in class and online, despite the cheesy nature of the jokes!

More challenging questions involving prime factors, HCF and LCM for students to work out. These are popular as a starter, plenary or main activity despite the jokes generally being a bit lame (this one is a classic though).

I wanted an extension for a class on solving quadratics; this is what occurred. There are 6 questions and 10 possible answers. These seem to work quite well and this will hopefully get them thinking.

Six questions, ten possible answers for students to have a go at. These have worked well on lockdown as those who feel confident can get without having to to ask the teacher to check their answers. The extra answers mean that students can’t guess or at least find it more difficult!

It’s the explanations of how answers were arrived at that I find students struggle the most with so hopefully this sheet helps with that. I have found these resources really encourage discussion in class and some relatively deep mathematical thought.

Five questions and ten possible answers on capture/recapture. These allow students to get on and as the answers are on the sheet they can check that they are doing the right thing.

A quick joke calculating angles using circle theorems, but circle theorems that are hopefully in a slightly different context than usual. These work well as starters, plenaries, main tasks or homeworks and even the cheesy jokes seem to be an incentive.

This is designed to get students to include all the relevant information when describing a transformation, and it revealing a cheesy joke. Students seem to enjoy the fact that they can just get on and check their own answers with these; they have worked both online and in class.

Five “spiders” with six (I know…) questions on each covering length, capacity and mass. The final two have mixed questions but they start at “12 o’clock” and work clockwise in difficulty… I have also left some specific units required out to allow students to choose and you, as the teacher, to add extra tasks of find as many possible answers etc.

Five questions of increasing difficulty on this topic; there are ten potential answers to prevent students guessing but allows students to get on in the knowledge that their answer should be one of the options whilst the teacher can help those who need it.

Answer the questions and be rewarded with a cheesy joke! These are always popular in class or online, the cheesier the joke the better.

Trying to expand my A Level codebreaker portfolio and this is next on the rank; differentiate using the chain rule to find the punchline to a cheesy joke. It’s something different to a text book exercise anyway…

These have been very successful in online lessons and remain successful now we are back in the classroom. These have been written since the New Year. Topics include averages, compound measures, bar charts, cumulative frequency, bounds, error intervals, functions, metric measures, probability and others. These are all available individually for free.

These defuse the bomb tasks have all been written since the New Year and have been successful in online lessons as well as in class. They cover topics such as rounding, truncation, sequences, sets and Venn diagrams, quadratics, compound measures, tree diagrams and more. They are all available for free individually.

Differentiate the algebraic expressions to find the punchline to a cheesy joke; something different from going through exercises in the book!

Another cheesy joke revealed upon differentiating some expressions using the product rule. A nice change from going through exercises in the text book.

Convert the trigonometric expressions to the appropriate double angle formula to reveal the anagram of a cheesy joke. I would use this as a starter but obviously use it (if at all) how you wish.

Find the roots as complex numbers and reveal the punchline to a cheesy joke. Something different to ploughing through text book exercises…

Simplify the complex numbers (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing) to reveal the “hilarious” punchline. Good for something different…?

Four of these sheets covering: capacity, mass and length plus one true or false activity involving problems with all three which should encourage discussion in class and force students to read the question carefully if nothing else. These have worked well in class and online allowing the teacher to help those who need it whilst other get on, reassured that their answers are on the sheet.