Adult Numeracy, Functional Maths, and GCSE Resources

A great set of resources for all levels from E1-L2. Includes information and worksheets, card / matching games and an IT drawing exercise.
Functional skills mapping and minor corrections made – August 2011.

An interactive whiteboard problem solving activity suitable for many levels. Makes a fun starter activity and provides a good link between shape and space and algebra. Can also used as a hands on activity for all (rather than just volunteers at the smartboard) using pencil and squared paper, plastic squares or wooden/plastic cubes.
Adult numeracy element links are difficult to classify but include:

Fabulous word and number cloud activities for E1 (maths words), E2 (odd even nos. and 2D shapes) and E3 (recognise, sort and and order metric measures). With instructions, extension ideas and answer sheets. Ideal for display (and annotation) on a smartboard.
Wordle is a brilliant on-line, completely free word cloud creator.
See our blog articles for more Wordle teaching and learning ideas:

This ‘random number generator’ is an open ended resource that the author originally designed to use for mental maths (adding or taking away 10 from the displayed number). It was later used it as part of a ‘Question of Sport’ quiz (in the spelling round!): learners choose a picture and then spell the ‘random’ number that appears: 49, 32, 28, 46, 67, 55, 21, 74 and 13 (these be edited to suit and could also be linked to any set of numbered, pre-prepared quiz questions on any topic).

Interactive worksheet with 3 pages of colourful information and key vocabulary followed by a 2 page time quiz (whole hours) with drop down menus.
Written for Entry Level ESOL, ICT and Numeracy learners.

Days of the week combines colourful pages of information (days of week and their order, abbreviations, numbers on calendars) with interactive practice pages (drag and drop and a very clever page where the text changes colour if correct spelling is typed). First used with Entry 1 ESOL – ICT learners but also suitable for E1 literacy and numeracy.

Questions about days and months . Interactive worksheet with drop down menus to select the correct day, no. of days in a month, etc. (Use as a follow on exercise after the Days of the week worksheet (see below).

A simple idea that makes a great warm up exercise for any group. A series of smiley faces is portrayed in increasing numbers and grouped in different ways. Encourage students to say how many faces there are (ideally without counting – as the ability to make and interpret patterns helps with many aspects of maths) and discuss how they look at the patterns, chunk up into to 3s, 4s and 5s, etc.