The big event on 29 April – free maths resource!

The 2011 Men’s World Ice Hockey Championships kick off in Slovakia on 29 April, leading up to the final on 15 May. Matches are being played in Bratislava and Kosice.

So while you’re waiting for the street party to warm up, why not have a go at this fun Level 5/6 algebra activity:

Click to download and hurtle that turtle!

And here are the Quick Teacher Notes and the Full Teacher Notes.

Note: No turtles were harmed in the making of these activities!

Exercise your mental maths!

As an antidote to all that couch potato-ing for the World Cup, have a go at this free maths activity – the Running Track (Speed) Game from our Level Up Maths  Key Stage 3 maths resource!

Questions are set at a basic numeracy/mental maths level so you can use it for warming up before a lesson, or as a competitive finale!

Ever wanted to run a race in a giraffe suit? Now’s your chance!

Level Up Maths 'Racetrack' Game

Click here to get to the starting line…

Cup Final Maths – Free resource!

Here’s our Wembley interactive maths lesson – part of Level Up Maths but free for you to use while Cup Final fever is mounting!

Wembley fractions activities

Click here to access the file – it’s 24 MB… so it’ll take a wee while to load.

Its all about fractions of quantities and equivalence of fractions, decimals and percentages, around NC Levels 4 and 5.  Teacher notes here if you need them…

The Easter Bunny is unwell… Free maths resource for end-of-term

Looking for an end-of-term maths activity? Try out this chapter-starter from our Level Up Maths book at Levels 5 to 7.

Number skills starter - click to download

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Winter Olympics – curling with maths!

With Olympic events still in mind, you’ll have some fun with the interactive activity we invented for Level Up Maths! It’s an activity around Levels 5 and 6 for algebra.

The scenario is that you’re a contestant in the curling event, which somehow has turned into turtle-sliding! The line the turtle takes to the target is shown on coordinate axes and you have to work out the equation of the line. The software keeps your score through the rounds, so you can see whether you’ve medalled!

Here it is!

 [Teacher notes – who need’s em!]

Valentine’s Day Special – We Heart Maths!

Following the awesome popularity of our Winter Olympics activity we’re going to make a habit of featuring topical activities from our sister KS3 series, Level Up Maths.

We love Maths, and we particularly fancy this activity “Pollyopoly” which uses the idea of the popular board game to explore issues around probability. This “Heart Maths” activity actually features in our Levels 6-8 textbook, so plenty of application at GCSE level. Click the image for a larger version.

Pollyopoly - a board game of chance

Learning objectives

• Be able to work out more complicated probabilities
• Be able to construct and use a sample space diagram
• Be able to carry out an experiment

This spread should enable pupils to explore a familiar concept and work out the probabilities of events happening.

Introduce pupils to the information on the spread. Allow them time look at the game board. Having a real game board in the classroom would be useful, such as a Monopoly® board. Explain that almost 750 million people have played Monopoly® since it first appeared in 1935. Have the pupils played it?

Talk to pupils about the need to consider the roll of two dice as well as the position of the items on the board. Discuss which dice totals are most likely.

A score of 7 occurs more often than other scores, so a space seven moves away is the most likely one to land on. At this point it might be a good idea to construct a sample space diagram for two dice on the board; this will help with the questions.

Problem solving at the Winter Olympics

Forecasters are predicting snow in the next few days, so in anticipation of that, here’s an activity taken from our Level Up Maths series,  for  exploring coordinates and graphs of simple functions based on Winter Olympic events.

Core skills include accurate drawing, problem solving and identifying patterns and relationships. Don’t worry if it’s not of immediate use, we’ll keep it on here well into the New Year.

The activity is here in Word format, and the accompanying worksheet is here.

Practice coordinates and graphs of simple functions