Adult Numeracy, Functional Maths, and GCSE Resources

An ESOL lesson embedding numeracy, diversity and British values, centred on the Spring Equinox and three festivals which happen around / on this day - Purim, Holi and Shunbun No Hi. Learners collect unfamiliar words on a vocabulary sheet and ask and answer questions to elicit meaning / explanation. There is a powerpoint to introduce the topic, using acronyms eg 7DIAW  - Seven Days In A Week to elicit key words, and lead to an explanation of what the Vernal Equinox is and when it is.

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 powerpoint used as a starter with all ESOL maths groups to check the spelling of numbers. I created it for E1 / E2, but always use it as a check with E3 – L2 at the beginning of the year. They all enjoy it and never complain it should be for babies. 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. Would be good used with small individual whiteboards.

Clever PPT reveals properties of eight 2D shapes, encouraging learners to name the shape before a picture is revealed. A whole class or small group activity designed to encourage discussion about the properties of shapes. Originally used in a family learning situation.

A great way to start a class – provides mental maths practice for E2-E3 but also suitable for higher level learners who can try it out with with large numbers and discuss how it works!

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).

Rounding presentation makes clever use of number lines and animation to demonstrate rounding whole numbers (nearest 10, 100, 1000) and decimals (nearest whole number, 1 and 2 d.p.) and using significant figures. Please ensure that you also download the accompanying PDF document (see below) with useful teaching notes and ideas for adapting the PPT for your own learners.

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.