A comment from my trainee teacher made me think that rounding to decimal places and significant figures needed an activity, so I came up with this. It should get students thinking and should open up discussion on rounding, which can be a little "dry" but essential to get to grips with. Typo corrected!

With the new curriculum in mind I did this. Students must use their knowledge of parallel and perpendicular lines to fill in blanks but this could lead to discussions about different ways to write equations of lines etc. Errant negative signs on number 4 corrected (I hope).

Six "spiders" on probability. The first two are basic, the middle two are two events (independent) and the final two are two events (dependent). Some "legs" answer questions, some legs give the answer and ask for the question. They have been split this way so that you can use different "spiders" with different classes. These should encourage discussion and questions such as "Is that the only answer?" which should demonstrate understanding. Typos corrected.

Four spiders, two with curve and two involving trigonometric functions. These are designed to be used as starters or plenaries but they also work as consolidation activities.

This leads students through graphing trigonometric functions, transforming f(x) and transforming a trigonometric function. The graphs are as big as I can make them in the format given so sorry if they are a bit small. I used Desmos for the graphs if you are interested (it’s brilliant!).

Work your way up to 3D Pythagoras and trigonometry…

I just wanted a reasonably simple reflection worksheet for some lower ability students so came up with this and it seemed to challenge them.

Can you calculate what the workers in each box are doing on the mathematical building site? It's essentially function machines but where you have the answers but need to find the rules.

Surds practice from basic simplifying to expanding brackets to rationalising denominators. This encourages workings and the students to work backwards (what's the question given this answer?) so should also encourage discussion in class.

This is a different way to allow students to gain some practice in short bursts and helps introduce fractional indices. The point is to generate discussion in class whilst the students do some work.

Four sets of four problems where students have the answer but there are blanks in the questions which require filling in. This is designed to create discussion in class and hopefully provides natural differentiation (stretch the “top end” by finding the general solution where possible compared to finding a single solution). I will be using these as starters or plenaries as I believe they will develop deeper understanding of topics, but feel free to use them as you like.

I just wanted something that covers bar graph; this covers “normal”, comparative and composite bar graphs and is designed, in two cases at least, to create discussion.

There are 8 sets of five questions that have been answered either correctly or incorrectly, the students have to decide which. These are designed to create discussion in classrooms and include one-step, two-step, brackets, variables on both sides, equations involving fractions, simultaneous equations (linear only) and quadratic equations (both factorised and non-factorised). Hopefully there should be something for all levels up to GCSE.

There are four trees where students can work from bottom to top, choosing an appropriately challenging start point if they wish. This is “introduction to algebra” stuff, I will do expanding and factorising on a separate file but these could offer nice starters or plenaries. It contains adding/subtracting as well as multiplying variables and collecting like terms.

Find the appropriate equivalent fraction and find the punchline to Tim Vine’s joke; designed as a bit more practice for some of my Year 7 and 8 classes, but could be useful for others. I have uploaded PDF versions so those who don’t have Equation Editor can see them; no need to thank me…

This is an exercise in finding the best way of buying what a customer wants given four different “deals” on pricing. You can buy more than required but not less which should add an extra bit of challenge. Workings are essential and I have provided answers on a separate slide each time. There are five to work out and this should lead to nice mathematical discussions. I have also put this in a format that could be used easily online if this is desirable.

This is an attempt to relate algebraic questions that children struggle with to worded questions they can all do. It is designed to start you off, building up from 'I think of a number' to a full blown linear equation.

This is designed to help introduce factorising of quadratic equations in order to solve them. This should lead to some discussion.

Show it for 20 seconds then they have to remember it exactly. I put the picture of me on there so they would concentrate on their reproduction rather than staring around the room, but feel free to change it to a picture of your choice!

In this activity various cartoon characters have been transformed - can the students describe each transformation?