Here are some starters/short activities on the language of Maths.

A two page activity to get your students talking and writing about shapes. Parts of this could be used as starters and it could certainly lead to a survey: go onto the street and see how many shapes you can spot and in what circumstances. EAL teachers can use this to teach/reinforce prepositions and the present continuous tense.

This is a 20 slide ppt, each slide having a maths verb or verb phrase on it e.g. select/expand/calculate/ draw the line of best fit. A starter to promote familiarity with and/ or practice with some of the language needed to answer maths questions. The anagram appears, then the answer floats in.

Some activities around the language of probability.

This is a worksheet on everyday terms which can be used in probability. I prepared this when one of my students said he didn't know what 'certain' meant. I have also uploaded a ppt with the same language which can be presented as a game of Splat! or a card sort activity.