Erica’s doing her data collection homework but keeps making mistakes. Can your classes help Erica learn from her mistakes by correcting then and explaining what she has done?

Another homework where Erica needs your class’ help; she is tackling standard deviation this time as well as quartiles and percentiles.

Erica’s met mechanics for the first time and is trying to complete her “Modelling In Mechanics” homework but without much success; can your classes help Erica by correcting her mistakes and explaining why they are mistakes?

Answer the questions, which get progressively more difficult, involving one or more of the trigonometric rules to reveal an anagram for the punchline of a joke. My classes seem to like these, the cheesier the joke, the better and given that this is an anagram they cannot guess the order of the letters for the answer.

Designed for the AQA Further Maths Level 2 Certificate course but could be used at A Level. Answer the questions, reveal the joke, you know the drill…

Formula, values, workings and answer columns; stuff is left blank, students fill in the blanks. It does what it says on the tin.

This asks students to estimate where a given fraction, decimal or percentage should be within a block; this uses students’ knowledge of the conversion between the three. Inspired by Professor Smudge (Twitter: @ProfSmudge).

This does what it says on the tin; some using coordinates, some using sketches, some working forwards, some backwards. Hopefully it will get students thinking carefully about transforming functions.

This looks at basic statistical diagrams: pictograms, bar charts and pie charts. There are four pages, one for each of the above and the final one being the same data represented by all three charts mentioned, but with bits missing on each. For each there are blanks to be filled, plus a question on the data. The idea is to get the students working forwards and backwards, not just getting stuck in a rut of doing the same thing repeatedly.

There are four “Show that” questions: two linear equations, two quadratics. These are designed to encourage students to write down method and working rather than just reading out an answer at the end.

One sheet with three lines and ten statements about coordinates on the graphs, gradient y-intercept and their equations where students need to decide whether the statements are true or false, correcting the false ones (and explaining where the misconception arose?). These have produced really nice discussion in class and online in my experience.

Four of these sheets covering: capacity, mass and length plus one true or false activity involving problems with all three which should encourage discussion in class and force students to read the question carefully if nothing else. These have worked well in class and online allowing the teacher to help those who need it whilst other get on, reassured that their answers are on the sheet.

Using the "If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club" advert from the 1980s, some maths questions based loosely on it. Designed as a bit of fun and to practise functional maths.

Answer the questions, link to the letters in the table and then laugh at the “hilarious” joke… you probably know how these work now. This one is on the product rule for counting (doing what it says on the tin).

This one does what it says on the tin; designed for AQA Further Maths Level 2 Certificate but could be used at GCSE level too.

This takes students through factorising quadratics, solving them and onto completing the square, including solving quadratics that won't factorise nicely. Designed as starters/plenaries/assess the learning activities.

Just one “Crack The Safe” activity on differentiation, involving differentiating, finding gradients and turning points. There are six questions with three possible answers for each. The wrond answers may generate discussion as to what has been done, but ultimately this is a self-checking worksheet that allows the teacher to help those who need it whilst others get on. I use these for starters or plenaries but use them how you wish.

This set of two worksheets is designed to force students to show their workings and not use a calculator when simplifying surds. There are straightforward simplifying, expanding brackets and rationalising the denominator with space to write working etc.

Two codebreakers (the first one is slightly easier than the second) where students must identify the equation of a trigonometric function from the graph, resulting in the punchline to a cheesy joke. The scale is as large as I can make it I’m afraid so I apologise that it is small. I used Desmos to draw the functions.

The name of these was born out of a typo (obviously) but it’s the usual format: do some maths (solve equations in this case) to find the punchline to a cheesy joke about fish, hence the “codbreaker”. Good for a starter, main activity or a plenary in my experience and the students enjoy finding the punchline, especially being the first to do so. This involves anything from two-step equations to variables on both sides including fractional parts. Number 2 is more challenging than number 1.