Four sheets where there are 6 questions but 10 potential answers; students are reassured by the answers being on the sheet allow the teacher to get on with helping those who require it. The sheets get increasingly difficult; I tend to use these as starters or as an initial task straight after the explanation.

Five worksheets with fewer questions than answers given allowing students to start and be reassured if their answer appears in the list of potential solutions allowing teacher to help those who really need it. The sheets get increasingly challenging from simplifying, basic rationalising, calculating, expanding brackets and rationalising “full on”!

Yet another fish pun (this one was made up by me!) involving expanding and simplifying two brackets with surds. Students seem to like these in all setting and I have used these in the classroom, during online lessons and as a homework so they are pretty versatile.

Two more fish jokes to decipher: one on set notation and one on Venn diagrams. These have worked well for me both in the classroom and online with others using them as homework tasks.

A mixture of finding and using the nth term of arithmetic sequences in order to reveal a punchline to a joke. These work in class, online and as homework as they offer a bit of competition but also reassure students as words are revealed.

Two fish jokes to reveal: one is trigonometry in right-angled triangles and one is either Pythagoras or trigonometry. These are always popular with my classes and I’ve used them in class and online but I know colleagues have used them as homeworks.

This is a presentation involving six real recipes (linked on each slide) and their ingredients which students have to work with to make the number of each required. This is designed to create a bit of discussion and the questions get more challenging as you work through them.

I am going to be teaching Year 7 some surface area of cuboids and cubes but only had one of these involving prisms which might be a step too far at this point. This was what I came up with. The answers are on the sheet (although there are more answers than questions to avoid default answers at the end) which gives students the confidence to keep going if they are getting questions correct allowing the teacher to help those who really need it.

Eight questions with ten possible answers. These allow the students who understand the topic to move on with the confidence of seeing their answers on the sheet (screen for online lessons) whilst the teacher can help those who need it.

Two situations regarding mutually exclusive events with six questions and ten potential answers. These are useful for students to get on and check that their answers are on the sheet whilst the teacher can help those who are completely stuck.

There are 28 Defuse The Bomb worksheets here, each with answers. These are designed to allow students to get on if confident enough to do so with the answers appearing on the sheet enabling the teacher to help those who require it. These have worked well with online lessons. Topics include algebraic fractions, area and perimeter, transformations, HCF/LCM, related calculations, simultaneous equations and surds. Each of these is available for free individually.

Students must answer the questions on simplifying ratios to reveal the punchline to a cheesy fish-related joke. These work well both in class and online as students who are confident just get on with the words revealed whilst teacher can help those who need it.

Two worksheets here; the answers appear on the sheet but there are just 6 questions but 10 answers to avoid guessing towards the end. These enable confident students to get going whilst a teacher can help those who are less confident. They have worked well online for me…

There are six “spiders” each with four increasingly challenging quadratics to solve, including completing the square and using the quadratic formula. Different blanks are left for students to fill in, working forwards to the solutions, backwards from the solutions, from partially complete questions and a mixture of all three. These have been very useful in online lessons.

There are 10 statements for students to decide whather they are true or false regarding a pair of box plots. This should encourage mathematical discussion and these sheets seem to work well online too.

Two more rounding-based tasks; answers are on the sheet but more than the number to questions to make guessing less easy but also allow those who have the confidence to continue without the need to ask the teacher to check, allowing the teacher to help those who actually require it. The truncation sheet also contains error intervals.

There are 6 sheets here covering finding the next term in a sequence, using the nth term, finding the nth term (arithmetic and quadratic), summing arithmetic and geometric sequences. These all contain the answers but there are more answers than questions to discourage guessing. this style of sheet has worked well both online and in classrooms in my experience and means that teacher can help those who require it whilst others get on, checking that their answers are on the sheet.

A music joke, hence the name (a suggestion from a very keen musician that I teach). Answer the questions involving metric measures and reveal the joke; popular in both online and real-time lessons.

Another music-based joke to work out; this involves percentage of a number, percentage change and reverse percentages. Popular in class and online; the music concept from a student I teach!

There are four sheets that each tackle a different skill using functions: substitution, inverse, domain/range, composite. The answers appear on the sheet so that confident students can self-check and not bother the teacher too much, whilst said teacher (presumably you) helps those who require it. These have worked well both in class and during online lessons.