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.

Here are 26 codebreakers on all sorts of topics including vectors, capture-recapture, value for money, compound measures, transformations, properties of number, circle theorems, set notation amongst other topics. These have been successful in class and during online lessons and these have been uploaded individually for free over the past year or so.

Indefinite integrals using the skills learned in Year 1 of the Edexcel A Level course that reveal a lame joke. These are a nice break from ploughing through a text book!

I felt like doing an A Level codebreaker and this seemed like a good topic to start with. Use laws of logarithms to reveal the punchline to a cheesy joke…

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

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.

Three sheets on error intervals and bounds (including calculations). There are six questions but ten possible answers to choose from so students can’t guess but can check if their answer is correct.

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.

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.

Answer the questions, reveal the (cheesy) joke. These allow those students who are confident to get on and find their answers on the sheet whilst the teacher helps those who require it.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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).

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!

Two true or false activities: one on Venn diagrams including probability and one on shading regions of Venn diagrams with both using set notation. Students decide and discuss whether the answers given are true or false. These have worked successfully in real-life and online lessons for me.

Three sets (based around number properties), ten statements and students need to work out if those statements are true or false. This involves union, intersection, subsets and probability involving sets. I have found that these encourage discussion in class.

Six questions to do and the answers on the sheet (four answers do not match to questions). These sheets allow those students who are confident to get on without asking if answers are correct whilst the teacher helps those who need it.