A number line is used in this resource, from the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching, to illustrate how to solve a calculation involving negative numbers. To help correct misconceptions regarding these, the term taking away is used to represent minus and giving back for plus. Thus -8 +6...

Architect’s skills, from Cre8ate maths, will develop the process skills involved in understanding and making sense of mathematical information. Students have to give unambiguous descriptions to enable their partner to build an identical copy of a hidden shape, whilst the partner has to listen and interpret the...

This set of Cre8ate maths activities explores three ways in which retailers and product manufacturers may seek to persuade customers to either buy more of their product or encourage customer loyalty. In ‘Prize draw’ students explore sequences and series. ‘Offers’ involves money calculations and comparison of prices...

Boxes and bottles come in all shapes and sizes. These Cre8ate maths activities explore some of the mathematics behind packaging decisions taken by manufacturers, they provide a platform for students to make conjectures and find efficient ways of recording results to justify claims they have made. In Boxing stock...

In Building a town, from Cre8ate maths, students are encouraged to consider the mathematical shapes which form the net of a building. Some simple models are shown and students could use these to construct their nets, before building the models themselves.

Straightforward logic is used in this resource, from the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching, to establish the calculation, necessary to move correctly along a number line, when the starting point is at a negative value. Phrases such as owing and debt are used to help students deal with...

This chapter in the booklet Relevant and Engaging Statistics and Data Handling from the Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education (RSSCSE) describes the steps needed to both take and use random samples of real data from the CensusAtSchool website. In addition it offers some ideas to allow students...

This chapter in the booklet Relevant and Engaging Statistics and Data Handling from the Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education (RSSCSE) looks at ways to visualise data. In particular how data can be displayed in tables and charts having been retrieved from an online database, particularly the...

This chapter in the booklet Relevant and Engaging Statistics and Data Handling from the Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education (RSSCSE) addresses how spreadsheet software such as Excel is used to analyse and present data. However, it can appear very easy to analyse data and produce charts and...

This Cre8ate maths activity requires students to calculate areas of polygons and to appreciate the link with volumes of prisms. It may also involve detailed exploration of similarity.

This activity from Cre8ate maths explores the rotational symmetry of carefully chosen crystals. Initially students work with plain and coloured nets of cubes may use trial and improvement methods to find different possible rotations of symmetry, before exploring ways to be systematic in their investigation. For...

This activity from Cre8ate maths explores Platonic solids, which are formed from regular polygons where all their faces are identical and all their vertices are identical too. Students are told that there are only five platonic solids, which they can build using triangles, squares and pentagons. Completing the...

The complete resource of Data, Numeracy and ICT Instant Maths Ideas contains all eight subject topics together with appropriate resource materials. The ideas are aimed at teachers of Key Stage Three but could also be appropriate for use with other age groups. Each topic contains a number of questions or activities...

This resource, from the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching, explores the misconception that decimals and fractions are different types of numbers. It illustrates how to write a decimal value as a fraction, as well as how, by using division, most fractions can be expressed with denominators of 10, 100 or...

This resource, from the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching, uses diagrams to illustrate division by a fraction and, to clarify the common misconception identified with this task, prompts students to rethink the statement, divide three by one quarter, as the number of quarters that fit into three....