Adult Numeracy, Functional Maths, and GCSE Resources

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.

This resource has been designed using ideas in the popular Celebrity BMI resource (From Janet Wilkins – see below) already available on Skillsworkshop but adapted to suit the needs of Entry/ Level 1 learners.

An activity to explore money management and negative numbers. Be prepared to signpost students if need be.

The activity starts with discussing who is most likely to get into debt and then by recognising that anyone can if they don’t have good money skills.

A topical investigation that can be used as a group or individual task. Learners imagine they have won tickets in the ballot and must plan their trip to Buckingham Palace.
Ideal for E3-L1 Functional maths, English and ICT but could be easily adapted for higher or lower levels.

Inspired by Judith White’s autumn apple cake resource (ratios, converting measures, formulae, etc.) this series of open ended tasks focuses on the importance of showing working out and explaining/justifying their conclusions. It also helps students get used to the idea that some maths questions do not have just one “correct” answer.

The theme is baking several cakes for a charity event and making a profit.
You will need Judith’s original recipe (see below) to complete some of the tasks. Fully mapped to the Functional Maths criteria.

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.

A Functional Maths resource using area, multiplication, division and money. I have used Wickes catalogues with my students as they are small and easy to use, but combining the task with internet research to find the best price would be a really good way of doing this lesson.
Fully mapped to L1-2 Functional Maths criteria.

A scaffolded investigation created for my Level 1 numeracy group but ideal for, and fully mapped to, L1-2 Functional maths.
Part 1 involves reading a description of a room and drawing simple scale diagrams (a grid is provided) before pricing up a carpet from a discount company.
Part 2 is more complex: calculate the length of skirting board, wallpaper, paint, dado rail and door framing required.