51ºÚÁÏ

A Power Point showing the most common 3D objects (technically 'shapes' refers to 2D, and 'objects' to 3D). Useful for an introduction or for revision, and in getting the correct vocabulary

A series of pictures of the same school (Mearns Castle in Scotland) taken from further and further away. For each picture pupils have to work out which is the correct scale.

A chance for pupils to put their Pythagoras knowledge to the test! They measure a few distances indoors (e.g. their jotters) and check then check if the diagonal is the length they expected by Pythagoras. Then they go outside the classroom and measure some distances in feet (their own feet) or paces.

A Power Point that includes questions on finding 10% (and 20%, 30% etc) and another one for 15%, 25%, 35% et cetera, Useful for teaching the topic or just for practice. Edit: added a new powerpoint of mixed questions

Mixed percentage questions, on these topics - percentage change - repeated percentage increase or decrease - reverse percentage Edit: added another Powerpoint called ‘Harder Percentage with a calculator’

Tired of your usual lesson starters? These six Power Points are on - how old are you in seconds - using coins - a famous question solved by Gauss - penguins - pandas - temperature in the UK and US

A series of seven Power Points with collections of questions that appear one at a time on the following topics: - adding (e.g. 20p add 50p) - which is bigger (pictures of coins) - count (counting coins) - divide (quarter of 80p) - how many coins (needed to make 13p) - multiply (2 x 29 pence) - subtract (£1 minus 45 pence)

A Power Point to (start to) answer the question of why we have 60 minutes in an hour. Wouldn't it be much easier if there were 100? Includes a few simple questions for pupils on finding fractions of 60.

A great way to introduce formulas, with a fun activity to estimate how fast your reaction time is. The Power Point introduces the idea of reaction time then shows pupils a simple experiment they can do, which leads to a formula for converting centimetres on a ruler to reaction time in seconds.

A fun Power Point about Rowan Hamilton's discovery of Quaternions. There are no actual formulas given here (just a hint that it's about 4D space), the point of the presentation is just that he had a brain wave while crossing a bridge and carved it into the bridge. Can be used with a junior class talking about 'inspiration' or a more senior class who know about complex numbers if you want to go into the actual equations of quaternions.

A fun presentation for pupils to try and guess what each magnified image is. Can also be used in a more advanced way to try and work out the (length) and (area) scale factors between the original picture and the answer.

Two pages of simplification, beginning easy (finding fractions equivalent to 1/2) and building up to more difficult questions (simplify 14/49). The aim is to highlight the similarity between finding equivalent fractions and simplifying, so pupils will recognise that they are really the same thing. Good for lower ability classes.

Some not very exciting but essential practice, with increasingly difficult questions such as - 1/4 of 24 - two thirds of 12 - increase £20 by a fifth - find two fifths of £11 - decrease £9.99 by a tenth

Pupils add fractions by shading squares. Simple at first, but gradually they build up to understanding why for example 1/2 + 1/3 = 5/6 Good for lower ability classes who benefit from a visual representation

A series of four worksheets to progressively introduce pupils to the idea of adding and subtracting fractions by matching the denominators. Rather than just presenting it to them as a rule, they work through simple examples to gain an understanding of what is happening. I wrote this out of frustration with a poor class who simply didn't seem to understand how fractions worked, and although they could memorise a method, would then misapply it (for example, trying to add three fractions with them was a disaster, until they actually understood what they were doing)

Four Power Point slides on sequences - the first is simple ‘what comes next’ - the second is counting matchsticks and finding a formula - the third is formally finding a linking formula between ‘S’ and ‘T’ - the fourth is more practice finding and using the relationship between ‘S’ and ‘T’ If you like more challenging ‘What Comes Next’ problems see my separate resource on that. A practice test on sequences. Full solutions attached.

Two Power Point slides of lesson starters for Distance Speed Time. The first involves reading a timetable, converting the time from hours and minutes to hours, then finding a speed (and for advanced pupils thinking about why the speed is so slow). The second will take longer and involves converting m/s to km/h, then an extended question about a boat journey which involves a few calculations then drawing a distance-time graph. Solutions included on the Power Points.

A worksheet with four pre-printed distance-time graphs for pupils to interpret. Their answers should be sentences such as "go at 4 metres per second for 3 seconds, then pause for 2 seconds, then ..."

A simple world map Starter Question introducing the idea of co-ordinates with longitude and latitude.

Tired of BODMAS? Try some exciting challenges! The first involves solving some problems and getting some letters, unscrambling them to find a city. Then you can make up your own. The second is dome tricky expressions. The third explores and unusual relationship between squares and cubes, which only works if you get your BODMAS correct.