Adult Numeracy, Functional Maths, and GCSE Resources

This is an adaptation of Murder at the Grange, which my students have always enjoyed.

I wanted to extend the work on calculating with time, so learners have to use and extend timetables and calculate multi-stage journey times. I also thought it would be good to have some female characters!

This is a set of part-blanked times tables grids for students to complete and use as a resource. Used with Entry level students. Includes 10×10 and 12×20 grids, with full and gap versions.

Editor’s note
Can be printed and completed on paper, or used on-screen.

Functional Skills maths across several levels.
A practical exercise involving estimation (of weight), weighing items and calculating range and mean.

Editor’s note
With detailed Functional Maths mapping

I put this together to explore number calculations and word problems with a mixed group of adult learners, looking at estimating, ways of checking your calculations and ways of reversing calculations.

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.

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.

Ideas for a revision class on the theme of making a cake. I have included a cake recipe by Delia Smith and some prices of cake ingredients and items for cake decorating.

A multi-functional resource for Literacy or Numeracy. Sample TV listings by day, programme, start and end times, channel and genre. Use for alphabetic or numeric sorting, skimming and scanning exercises, literacy social sight vocabulary for days of the week, numeracy exercises for calculating time, etc. This resource contains some sample exercise questions to use which can be developed further according to need. I laminated the sheets and then cut up into days so lower level learners can move the elements around. Higher level learners can work from the whole page sheets as well.

An adaptation of John Thompson’s popular You’re in the money (1997 – see below) which makes good use of Argos and Littlewoods catalogues. This adaptation has differentiated task sheets (E2-3, and L1-2) and is ideal for underpinning many aspects of Functional Mathematics including money, odd-even numbers, problem solving, rounding, averages and more; in addition to developing problem solving skills.

Boxes is a very useful hands-on diagnostic assessment activity ideal for the start of term. Covers many aspects of Measure Shape and Space including estimatiung, measuring, rounding, area and volume. With ideas for L1-2 extension. Also suitable for underpinning Functional Maths.