Contextual Resources

A challenging project where students must research, plan and cost a luxury garden. Includes scale diagrams, money, and shape and space problems (paving slabs). Extension options cover percentages and averages. Great for horticulture students or anyone with an interest in gardening.
Also ideal for L1-2 Functional Maths.
The project also involves web investigation (costs of garden materials) and writing a covering letter (selling the finished garden design) and therefore also covers Functional ICT and Functional English.

Car park survey pictogram creator is a clever Excel sheet for recording the different numbers of coloured cars in a car park.
Two versions are available – v1 has 1 picture representing 1 car, version 2 has one picture representing 5 cars.

Buying herbs at the garden centre is based on packets of seeds and covers addition and subtraction of decimals (money), range and mean, and scale drawings. Great for horticulture students or anyone with an interest in gardening.
The problem solving nature of many questions and the drawing a scale diagram task also makes this ideal for E3-L1 Functional Maths.

Cocktail and smoothie ratios is a wonderful way to introduce ratio and proportion (also covers converting measures). Choose your favourites from the ‘menu’, work out ratios for the ingredients and calculate amounts required for multiples such as 6, 10 and 20 drinks, make up your own cocktail.
Adapted from Jodie Travis’s original version (see below). This adapted version includes a wider range of non-alcoholic cocktails / smoothies for students that do not drink alcohol.
Also ideal for underpinning L1-2 Functional Maths.

A challenging set of tasks (and points for discussion) based on two opposing articles from a Sunday paper. Designed to assess whether students are working at level 2 standards and can follow an argument, recognise bias, distinguish between fact and opinion, etc.

A straightforward dialogue for paired speaking and listening practice. 2 pages – the second page allows for changes to be added.

A fun paired dice game that really gets across the meaning and purpose of finding the mode, median and range of a set of data. Great for footie fans – who can choose their own name for the home team.

A challenging series of tasks based on food nutrition labels. Also covers ordering/comparing decimals, pie charts, extracting information from tables, etc.

Planning a barbecue is just in time for the end of the BBQ season and is a great way to introduce the idea of scaling down (or up). Some of your guests are unable to come. How can you adjust the food quantities to avoid wastage? Designed to facilitate discussion about ratios and fractions.
The problem solving nature also makes this very suitable for L1 Functional Maths.

Fantasy job lesson plan is a step by step detailed plan based on Jane Harbord’s popular Fantasy Job Project resource submitted in 2008 (see below). Gets students looking at job adverts and discussing what is required by employers. Great for general literacy classes or employment skills groups.