Adult Numeracy, Functional Maths, and GCSE Resources

Hands-on extension tasks for various Skillsworkshop cocktail and smoothie resources. (Original resources can be found under “see also” below).

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.

[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.

Page 1: 8 maths questions relating to olympic torch
Page 2: Picture quiz: who is carrying the torch?
Page 3: Picture quiz: famous UK landmarks.
Page 4: UK cities – anagrams
Page 5: Answers

• Quizzes on pages 2 and 3 make good ice breakers and can also be used for SL&C discussion prompts.

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 set of cards to cut out and ideally put in plastic balls or a jazzy box. Aimed at E2- E3 Functional Skills learners as an ice breaker, introductory lesson or for revision. Students need to work out the question and identify the maths skills they are using to answer it. Best printed onto card.
Questions are aimed to appeal to young adult students – e.g. clubbing, Facebook, food, mobiles, etc.
Questions cover the 4 operations, money, time, shapes and more.
26 cards. Includes Functional Maths mapping chart.

A Functional Maths and numeracy task sheet written for a mixed group of entry level learners to collect, represent and analyse data on favourite biscuits. The topic is introduced with a news article about Britain’s favourite biscuits. Learners must create a tally chart/frequency table, a pictogram and a bar chart. Pre-drawn grids and squared paper is included.

Inspired by Jane Russell’s place value slider (see below), this slider allows for easy conversion of metric units. I printed the sliders on A3 paper so there would be enough to pull from both sides. I used different colours for weight, distance and capacity.

An illustrated example shows how to use the sliders. Sets of 4 sliders are on different pages to make it easier to print on different colour paper. A photograph of the finsihed slider i salso availalbe below