Adult Numeracy, Functional Maths, and GCSE Resources

This is a data handling activity aimed at L1/2 learners that involves calculating the mean and range, constructing a bar chart and then making sense of what the results mean in a functional context.

More observant learners may rename this activity ‘Sophie’s choice’!

Graph or squared paper is needed for question 3.

Based on two recent articles / surveys on Black Friday shopping, the main focus of this resource is Functional Mathematics but there is also an introductory page of English questions that check vocabulary, purpose of text and the ability to extract meaning from graphical material and captions.

This is followed by three pages of challenging differentiated questions for E3-L2 Functional Maths – all are based on the infographics within the text. Topics include large numbers, percentages, fractions and the four operations.

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

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.

Covers geometric drawings, area, perimeter, money, metric measures, tallies, line graphs and much more.
Fully mapped to the Functional Maths criteria and process skills. With answer sheet.

Editor’s note
Wonderful open ended project. Ideal for E3-L2 mixed ability groups.

Mean, Mode, Median and Range: Investigation into house prices.

Students use www.rightmove.co.uk to explore house prices in areas of their choice. For example pairs of students could explore house prices in different cities in the UK.

They will need access to computers. You will also need to establish criteria before they start to collect their data so that like for like houses are being compared. For example all of the groups are to compare prices of 2 bedroom flats in the cities of their choice.

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.

Here is another Level 1-2 variant on the classic ‘Smarties’ investigation which incorporates the use of a PC and Excel. I stopped using Smarties and Skittles because of the health and hygiene issues.

A clearly set out investigation into TV film age ratings. This makes an ideal investigation for mixed ability groups as it is cleverly differentiated for E3-L2 (E2 students could also participate with support).
All you need is a recent weekly TV guide.
Covers tallies, dual and single bar charts, pictograms, extracting and comparing information and designing a questionnaire. Fully mapped, and ideal for, Functional Maths.

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.