Two fish jokes to figure out; the first codbreaker asks students to find prime factors and the second is on finding HCF or LCM. I use these as starters, plenaries and main tasks as they are self-marking; this means that they have been useful for online learning/lessons too.

This contains questions on speed, density, pressure and population density, with questions getting increasingly challenging as you go through. These sheets seem popular with students and are ideal for working in school or from home.

A fish joke after some population density questions are answered correctly; like a dream come true for many, I’m sure… Ideal for in class, homework or online. As the answers spell out a word or short sentence students know if they are going right or need help.

Summing arithmetic sequences and various other things arithmetic sequence related. The usual answer questions then unjumble the letters to reveal a fish joke. Ideal for in class or at home.

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.

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.

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.

Erica keeps making mistakes on her homework; she needs your class’ help to explain what she’s done wrong so she won’t make the same mistakes again. This involves Venn diagrams, tree diagrams and independence.

Erica is looking at the binomial distribution here but making errors as usual. Can you classes correct Erica’s work and explain where she went wrong? I have written questions so that either tables or calculator can be used.

Erica’s homework on forces and motion is causing her issues as usual; can your students help Erica correct her mistakes and explain what she’s done incorrectly? Good for classroom discussion.

This does exactly what it says on the tin… needed for a session with Year 6.

The usual "do the Maths, find the punchline) thing; find where the coordinates have moved to after the transformation. I particularly like this joke, by the way.

Written for the AQA Further Maths Level 2 Certificate but could be used at A Level too. This is the usual “answer the questions, reveal the anagram of the punchline” thing, being an anagram so that student don’t guess the order/answers. I like this joke but others may not…

This is designed to help introduce factorising of quadratic equations in order to solve them. This should lead to some discussion.

Two sheets: one on distance-time (or displacement-time) and one on speed-time Students must decide, using the graph, whether each statement is true or false. These can encourage nice discussions in class.

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.

Find the roots as complex numbers and reveal the punchline to a cheesy joke. Something different to ploughing through text book exercises…

This worksheet deals with symmetry of quadratics, where a quadratic function intersects with the y-axis and turning points/vertices of quadratics. It is aimed at Further Maths Level 2 students but could be used at the top level of GCSE as well.

We put on a Stem Day for Year 6 students and decided to do binary as the topic for a 45 minute session. This takes students through converting between binary and decimal numbers, including a couple of codebreakers (we produced a Stem leaflet for them to take away). The PowerPoint moves on to adding and subtracting in binary if you need it. It went well and was delivered by a range of people so if it’s useful to you… There’s even a bonus codebreaker on adding and subtracting in binary.