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.

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.

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!

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.

Answer the questions, colour in the answers that are even, leave blank the answers that are odd, use your Smartphone to scan the resultant QR code to get a link to Feist and the cast of Sesame Street singing '1,2,3,4'. My lot(s) love it!

Answer the questions, colour in the answers that are even, leave blank the answers that are odd, use your Smartphone to scan the resultant QR code to get a link to Joyzipper's song '1' (it&'s a great song, and I can heartily recommend the album too). My lot(s) love it!

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!

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.

This designed to help students unravel and solve quite complex equations. It could also lead to in-class discussion and there are templates/blank slides to do your own should you wish. The initial idea came from a colleague (thank you Mr Steve...).

This covers simple direct and inverse proportion, including finding the relationship bewteen x and y as well as using the formula to calculate other values. Some challenge ones involve surds towards the end. Each spider has challenges for discussion when seeking solutions. Designed to encourage discussion.

This covers basic differentiation, finding gradients at given x values but could be used to introduce integration plus moves on to negative and fractional powers of x. Could be used at Core 1 (or whatever they are going to call it when it changes) and with the new GCSE.

The predictably lame joke upon answering the histogram questions. The first part involves calculating from a frequency table and the second involves reading a histogram.

Four lame jokes to discover (a couple with help from Tim Vine) based around logarithms. I use these as starters to get the students in the logarithm mood but use them as you wish. They cover simplifying, and use of the laws.

This is designed to test all aspects of y=mx+c. There are 4 different "explosions" of increasing difficulty that should encourage discussion in class and hopefully develop deeper understanding of the concept of equations of lines.

All these Christmas-themed worksheets are available for free but if you want them as a bundle then this one covers data and geometry and measures. There are festive worksheets on unit conversion, transformations, area and perimeter, tree diagrams, bearings and distance-time.

All these are available for free individually but if you want them all in one lot here you go. Each delivers a (generally lame) joke whilst practising key mathematical skills. I use them for short homeworks, starters and plenaries. Topics include vectors, probability trees, circle theorems, algebraic fractions, histograms, angle properties, trigonometry, simultaneous equations, sets and Venn diagrams. All come with answers.

This is a Christmas-themed idea I came up with where students answer the questions (the solutions are 1 to 24) and each answer links to a word; put the words in numerical order and an entire joke is revealed! My students are actually enjoying them quite a lot.