Adult Numeracy, Functional Maths, and GCSE Resources

An activity that gets students to analyse information from a table on different phone contracts. Covers extracting data, basic number and money.

This is great as a warm-up activity or a bit of end-of-term fun. It is suitable for a mixed ability group of numeracy learners, or indeed literacy or ESOL learners. This quiz tests learners’ knowledge of how old someone has to be in order to do certain things legally, e.g. be a blood donor. It can be used in small group or pair work (which worked well for me) as well as individually.

Place value game involving dice and calculators. Helps build confidence with place value.
Can be used with all ability levels and easy to adapt.
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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.

Great set of three differentiated Functional Maths task sheets for E1, E2 and E3. Originally written for ESOL Numeracy groups but suitable for all Entry Maths learners. The picture shows part of the E3 version.

All tasks are based on office equipment (pencils, hole punches, staplers, etc.). The focus is on number skills (counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, rounding, simple fractions) but there is also a sprinkling of data handling and measure/money skills.

Fully mapped to Functional Maths criteria.

Students design a board game to demonstrate their learning. This can incorporate IT skills (Word template provided below) or can be done with paper, card and pens.

I originally did this with an E2E group and it proved popular. It’s an alternative to the “design a poster” task to review learning. The instructions are set out as a board game. it can be used for literacy, numeracy, ICT or ESOL.

Powerpoint for practising numbers to 20, not necessarily all at once.

Used as a starter with all ESOL maths groups to check the spelling of numbers. I created it for E1 / E2 and it could be used for ESOL, Literacy or Numeracy classes.

A selection of smileys are shown on each slide. Clicking reveals the number (as a digit) and a further click reveals the number spelt out as a word. Good used with small individual whiteboards.

This carousel of Jubilee tasks was hurriedly put together for a group of 10 E1-E3 Functional Maths and English 16-19 year old learners who had just (very successfully!) finished all their Edexcel Functional Skills assessments.

After a year of hard work from my students, the emphasis was on celebration and fun. However, learning objectives included: measuring, counting, writing an email, spelling, 2D shapes, estimating, rounding and working with money. Rough lesson outline also included.

A high interest worksheet which uses the layout of engines to reinforce some basic mathematical concepts, and to encourage reading. Lots of discussion points.
The angle of the V – right angle or acute angle?
Counting in 2s – How may cylinders – 2 rows of 3, etc.

Editor’s note: interesting mix of skills covered from E2 to L1. Focus is on angles but there is also basic doubling and counting in twos so would work well in mixed ability groups.