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.

Eight questions with ten possible answers. These allow the students who understand the topic to move on with the confidence of seeing their answers on the sheet (screen for online lessons) whilst the teacher can help those who need it.

Two situations regarding mutually exclusive events with six questions and ten potential answers. These are useful for students to get on and check that their answers are on the sheet whilst the teacher can help those who are completely stuck.

There are 28 Defuse The Bomb worksheets here, each with answers. These are designed to allow students to get on if confident enough to do so with the answers appearing on the sheet enabling the teacher to help those who require it. These have worked well with online lessons. Topics include algebraic fractions, area and perimeter, transformations, HCF/LCM, related calculations, simultaneous equations and surds. Each of these is available for free individually.

Students must answer the questions on simplifying ratios to reveal the punchline to a cheesy fish-related joke. These work well both in class and online as students who are confident just get on with the words revealed whilst teacher can help those who need it.

Two worksheets here; the answers appear on the sheet but there are just 6 questions but 10 answers to avoid guessing towards the end. These enable confident students to get going whilst a teacher can help those who are less confident. They have worked well online for me…

There are six “spiders” each with four increasingly challenging quadratics to solve, including completing the square and using the quadratic formula. Different blanks are left for students to fill in, working forwards to the solutions, backwards from the solutions, from partially complete questions and a mixture of all three. These have been very useful in online lessons.

There are 10 statements for students to decide whather they are true or false regarding a pair of box plots. This should encourage mathematical discussion and these sheets seem to work well online too.

Two more rounding-based tasks; answers are on the sheet but more than the number to questions to make guessing less easy but also allow those who have the confidence to continue without the need to ask the teacher to check, allowing the teacher to help those who actually require it. The truncation sheet also contains error intervals.

There are 6 sheets here covering finding the next term in a sequence, using the nth term, finding the nth term (arithmetic and quadratic), summing arithmetic and geometric sequences. These all contain the answers but there are more answers than questions to discourage guessing. this style of sheet has worked well both online and in classrooms in my experience and means that teacher can help those who require it whilst others get on, checking that their answers are on the sheet.

A music joke, hence the name (a suggestion from a very keen musician that I teach). Answer the questions involving metric measures and reveal the joke; popular in both online and real-time lessons.

Another music-based joke to work out; this involves percentage of a number, percentage change and reverse percentages. Popular in class and online; the music concept from a student I teach!

There are four sheets that each tackle a different skill using functions: substitution, inverse, domain/range, composite. The answers appear on the sheet so that confident students can self-check and not bother the teacher too much, whilst said teacher (presumably you) helps those who require it. These have worked well both in class and during online lessons.

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!

The usual thing: answer the questions, reveal the cheesy joke. I use these as starters, plenaries and main tasks; you can use them (or not as the case may be) however you like… but students do seem to like them (if the volume of groans at the jokes is anything to go by).

Six questions, ten answer options. The questions are all based around similar shapes. These are good for students to just get on with as the answers appear on the sheet.

A bunch of codebreakers (30 I think, with answers) on various topics, including Venn diagrams (probability), set notation, vectors (including calculations), turning points of quadratics (completing the square), transformations, truncation/error intervals, sale prices, properties of number, circle theorems, product rule for counting, identities, midpoints, domain/range of functions, currency conversion, density, capture/recapture. These are good for any stage of a lesson or homework and are easy to mark as they should spell out the punchline to a joke. All these codebreakers are available individually for free.

Four slides each with five questions on answered either correctly or incorrectly; students must decide whether each given answer is correct or incorrect then explain why. These work nicely as a reasoning activity at the end of a lesson or topic in my experience but use them how you like (or don’t).

This resource uses tables when expanding and factorising but you can edit if you want to do something else. Essentially this leads students through forwards and backwards through expanding and factorising two brackets, and should lead to discussion. There is an extension where a is not 1.

Yet another one of these; answer the questions, figure out the anagram, laugh a very tiny bit (or groan)… students seem to like them.