The Mathematician, that notorious terrorist, has put a series of bombs around the country, but each has a clue to defuse it. These cover many aspects of fractions, decimals and percentages and are numbered so that they get increasingly difficult. As I say, my classes like these as starters/plenaries, hence there are so many.

This is a powerpoint covering probability from basic single events to tree diagrams of dependent events. It contains brief notes by way of an explanation, model answers to questions and a question or two for the students to do; all of the questions come with answers that you can display when ready. The slide show comes with a progress grid (regularly referred to in the presentation) so that students can mark their progress from start to finish and pinpoint any areas that may need extra work with a “red/amber/green” system that they fill in; each one is given an approximate grade in both new (2017 onwards) and old system in England. It’s what I use in my lessons before setting tasks from worksheets or text books to practise.

This is a powerpoint covering order of operations. It contains brief notes by way of an explanation, model answers to questions and a question or two for the students to do; all of the questions come with answers that you can display when ready. The slide show comes with a progress grid (regularly referred to in the presentation) so that students can mark their progress from start to finish and pinpoint any areas that may need extra work with a “red/amber/green” system that they fill in; each one is given an approximate grade in both new (2017 onwards) and old system in England. It’s what I use in my lessons before setting tasks from worksheets or text books to practise.

This is a powerpoint covering inequalities from number lines, solving and shading regions. It contains brief notes by way of an explanation, model answers to questions and a question or two for the students to do; all of the questions come with answers that you can display when ready. The slide show comes with a progress grid (regularly referred to in the presentation) so that students can mark their progress from start to finish and pinpoint any areas that may need extra work with a “red/amber/green” system that they fill in; each one is given an approximate grade in both new (2017 onwards) and old system in England. It’s what I use in my lessons before setting tasks from worksheets or text books to practise.

These are all available individually for free but are available as one big bunch here. The concept is to choose the correct order to cut the wires by answering the questions correctly - each wire is linked to a question. Not all the wires need cutting to prevent guessing at the end. I use these as starters, plenaries (prove you can do the work tasks) and quick homeworks!

Types of Graph

Given the equations of the curves required to destroy the pigs, can the students plot the graphs? This is an attempt to bring quadratic graphs to the world of the teenager!

Help desperate Food Tech teacher Billy Black with his cake recipes before he's abducted by aliens. Clearly a play on the TV show, but an exercise in simple proportion using amounts of ingredients for recipes - the calculations get progressively more difficult.

This is a powerpoint covering all areas of Core 1. It contains brief notes by way of an explanation, model answers to questions and a question or two for the students to do; all of the questions come with answers that you can display when ready. The slide show comes with a progress grid (regularly referred to in the presentation) so that students can mark their progress from start to finish and pinpoint any areas that may need extra work with a “red/amber/green” system that they fill in. It’s what I use in my lessons before setting tasks from worksheets or text books to practice.

The bosses at Legoland are building a new scale model of the UK and need your help with the scales. Basically fill in the blanks.

This is a task involving the four rules (add, subtract, multiply, divide) with negative numbers. Basically students fill in the blanks but there could be discussion about different answers etc.

Is Blitzen correct in telling Santa what the equation of his flight path is? It's up to you (or your class) to show that it is!

Using the fighting game of Tekken can you help the programmers calculate the missing angles in each move? This is designed to be a starter of an angles lesson, not a challenge. I have done a Smart Board version to save on printing.

A student gave me the title (pun on 'The Hunger Games' - original was 'The Number Games'), I did the rest. Five different sets of questions in a functional style for students to work through either individually or in pairs/teams.

I saw this picture on Twitter and thought that there must be some maths in it and came up with this. I'm sure you will all come up with better stuff than me but this is what I came up with on a Saturday morning!

Having seen a link to a clip from Taken 2 posted by @dwatson802 (thank you, by the way) I came up with this. I was going to do more from Taken 2 but couldn't find a good map of Istanbul! It&'s locus around a point and perpendicular bisector basically with some success criteria.

This is a powerpoint covering all areas of Core 2. It contains brief notes by way of an explanation, model answers to questions and a question or two for the students to do; all of the questions come with answers that you can display when ready. The slide show comes with a progress grid (regularly referred to in the presentation) so that students can mark their progress from start to finish and pinpoint any areas that may need extra work with a “red/amber/green” system that they fill in. It’s what I use in my lessons before setting tasks from worksheets or text books to practice. If there are any silly errors then let me know so I can correct them but I have been through the entire presentation with students who are keen to point out mistakes!

Another joke whose punchline is revealed upon doing a load of maths. This is designed as a plenary/starter. Numbers 1 and 2 in the "Solving Quadratics" series are uploaded from months ago. Error corrected this time I hope!

Solve the simultaneous equations to reveal the punchline to a lame joke in both cases. The equations on codebreaker 1 are all designed to be solved by elimination; the equations on codebreaker 2 are to be done by substitution.

I got a request to do an activity using the A Team, both old and new. This is it! Convert each unit so that either 'old' or 'new' A Team understands. The numbers are pretty simple and it is designed to be a starter or plenary.