Functional Maths - handling information and data

Budgeting Spreadsheet: Students enter amounts into a self calculating spreadsheet to work out a persons budget for the month.
This resource is best used around the topic of budgeting and bank accounts. I used it alongside the excellent Barclays Money Skills site.

I’ve adapted a resource made by Janet Wilkins on your site in 2008 (see link below under See also), on global best selling singles-making a pie chart. I’ve updated it for the digital age! You’ll see what I mean…..enjoy.

Editor’s note
Ideal for L2 Functional Maths

The main resource has four pages. Three of the pages contain a chart and a brief to a group of students to discuss and write some sentences saying what the chart tells them. The twist is that each group of 3 students has a different chart drawn from the same data as the groups next to them. The fourth page has the table from which the charts were drawn.

The charts used are: dual/clustered bar chart comparing types of drink sold on two days. A stacked/composite bar chart and a percentage bar chart of the same data.

I have created this worksheet to assess learners in operating with decimals and reading and extracting data from a table.

Editor’s note
With curriculum mapping and answer sheet.

A data chart of average monthly high and low temperatures for a selection of world cities is used to answer functional maths questions.

Skills tested include accuracy of reading data, ordering positive and negative numbers, calculating the mean and range of data including negative numbers.

There is a tricky anagram to finish off the worksheet, which will appeal to some leaners who like puzzles and wordskills.

The chart could be used separately and many other questions devised from the information it contains.

This maths investigation brings awareness about reusable energy and therefore, sustainability. Students are asked to analyse data and make decisions through connecting a few different topics of mathematics such as large numbers, rational numbers (including ratio and scale), handling data and elements of geometry. Moreover, the project can be continued by English language tutors.

This is a practical handling data task at L1 and L2 which uses the Internet to find the necesssary data in order to complete a Expenses claim form.

I work with Landbased students most of whom visit an exhibition at the Bath & West show ground. In this task they have to work out how much it will cost them to travel to the site and how much the entry fee is, then enter this information onto a expenses claim form as if they were submitting it to an employed to reclaim their costs.

For L2 students they need to find the actual cost of the fuel they use for the journey.

The classic example of a tally is keeping track of how many cars of each colour go past in the street, but that is rather awkward to do in practice.

Use this presentation to save having to leave the comfort of the classroom! It is a PowerPoint slideshow of cars of various colours, to be projected onto the board. Tell learners to keep a tally of how many cars of each colour appear. Where a car has more than one colour, they should put it under the predominant colour.

E1 learners could focus on simply counting (for instance) all the red cars.

Mean, Mode, Median and Range: Investigation into house prices.

Students use www.rightmove.co.uk to explore house prices in areas of their choice. For example pairs of students could explore house prices in different cities in the UK.

They will need access to computers. You will also need to establish criteria before they start to collect their data so that like for like houses are being compared. For example all of the groups are to compare prices of 2 bedroom flats in the cities of their choice.

[img_assist|nid=5329|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=100|height=70]A set of differentiated tasks for construction students. I used the E3-L1 task with my Entry to L1 group and then the more challenging task with my L1-L2 students.

The use of measure is aways useful for my students as it is something they need to practise constantly given their vocational areas. The lesson was enjoyed by all, especially the hands-on measuring task prompted lots of fun and discussion. Encourage students to get others to check their measurements and validate their results.