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”!

Convert the area and volume units to reveal the punchline to a joke related to the ocean. These work in the classroom, online or as a homework and students seem to enjoy them, especially the competitive side of discovering the punchline first.

Answer some questions involving negative numbers in context and reveal a joke involving or related to fish. These work well in the classroom as a starter or main task but also online or as a homework. The students seem to enjoy the challenge of discovering the corny joke too!

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.

State the inequalities that bound the shaded region and discover the punchline to the fish-related gag. These seem to work either in a classroom, online or as a homework task, encouraging some competition for those who enjoy it.

Answer the questions involving density, mass and volume to reveal the punchline to a joke. These work well as either class activities, online school activities of as a homework and students seems to like the challenge and competition to find the punchline first.

Students are given a set of lines and have to solve the simultaneous equations; some need to be rearranged as well. I tend to use this as a starter or right at the beginning of a topic as the answers are there allowing students who understand get on and the teacher to help those who require help.

Three sets of questions where the answers appear on the sheet as well; this allows for the students who are understanding the topic to know that they are because their answers are on the sheet already, leaving the teacher to help those who need it. There are 3 sheets in total of increasing difficulty. I tend to use these at the start of a topic or a starter before moving on to the next stage.

Use one calculation and place value to answer the other questions; these sheets contain 10 answers for 8 questions so that guesses are avoided but students know that if their answers are in the table then they are likely to be heading in the right direction.

This was left over from ages ago and I’ve finally got around to finishing it! Name the inequalities represented on the the graph given the shaded region basically. Answers are on the sheet so that students can just get on unless they are completely stuck.

Two fish jokes to discover by understanding y=mx+c and the properties of parallel and perpendicular lines; these are useful for in class, online classroom and homework.

Use place value to find how many times larger one digit is from another and then find the difference between them. This idea was floated on Twitter by Dave Taylor (@taylora01) and full credit goes to him for the idea and I hope this does it some justice.

A PowerPoint with three graphs drawn on each of 8 slides of increasing challenge, moving from linear through to quadratics, cubics, reciprocals and exponential graphs. On each slide there are equations to match to each graph plus extra equations so that it adds more challenge; there is a blank grid so that the equations that don’t match can be sketched.

Two fish jokes to find involving gradients: one short one with lines and one where students have to find the gradient between two points. These work in class, online or as homeworks and seem quite popular.

Use one of the three calculations given to find the answers to the questions and reveal a rather good joke (if you like golf). these are popular with students and ideal for either using in class, online or as a homework in my experience. This could be used at KS3 or KS2 i think.

Impossible, the game show, involves asking questions and giving three possible answers: one correct, one that’s incorrect but could be correct in a different context, an impossible answer. There are twelve questions on various different topics and this is designed to encourage reasoning and discussion. Getting the answer correct is obviously important but the discussion as to why the impossible answer is correct and the other one not correct for the context might be more interesting. Topics include fraction calculations, place value, rounding, coordinates, angles and others and could be useful for Year 7.

This gives you a calculation at the centre of each of four “spiders”; students then have to use the central calculation to fill in the blanks using their knowledge of place value. Some blanks are answers are answers to a calculation, some are questions where they are given the answer. This is designed to avoid students getting in to a rut regarding these questions and make them think about their answers.

Solve the problems involving time and find the punchline to the fish-related joke. Useful as a classroom activity, online or as a homework.

Find the areas of some parallelograms, trapeziums, compound shapes and circles as well as working backwards to calculate a dimension to discover a really lame fish pun/joke (a generous description in this case). Ideal for class task, online task or a homework.

Use the graph showing 5 hours in the life of a shark to answer the questions and reveal a (pretty terrible) punchline to a joke. These work in class or online and essentially mark themselves as they spell out the answer so students can be reasonably independent with it.