The Spode Group was a group of mathematics teachers and lecturers who were developing curriculum material in secondary mathematics which encourages the use of applying mathematics to practical problems.

This collection of resources includes problems for students in lower secondary schools through to those...

In this Bowland assessment task, students are required to design a sports bag for a sports company. The bag is in the shape of a cylinder. Students draw the net of the bag from the given dimensions and consider how the three pieces of the bag, the main body of the bag and the two circular ends, should be cut from a...

The Nuffield Foundation provide this activity for students to consider the difficulties in using real data, from the Department of Trade and Industry, to identify which sport is the most dangerous to participate in. The data includes the age and gender of patients requiring treatment at a sample of hospitals after...

Chris Holmes is a sports technologist for sports equipment manufacturer Adidas. This Department for Education clip is useful in showing students how a career such as this relies on a background of STEM study. Chris describes how he specialises in the development of sports balls. His job is to investigate the best...

This resource from the Nuffield Foundation provides simulated information regarding an invoice, phone bill and bank statement. Each document contains several errors and students will have to check the details carefully to establish the correct values. Copies of the invoice, phone bill and bank statement with gaps...

This resource, from the Maths Careers website, asks students to spot the shape in a series of fifteen images. The images include everyday objects, logos and landscapes. For each picture, students are asked to draw the outline of the shape they have spotted and, in the space provided, write the name and any known...

Students check for errors in a simulated invoice, phone bill and bank statement (there are several errors on each).

This resource is part of the Nuffield Maths Level 1 Foundation resource collection.

This Core Maths resource enables students to explore various models of the spread of disease. 

The presentation has links to instructions for three activities:

• a practical investigation using a die and counters to model...

The Nuffield Foundation provide this resource which can be used to introduce the shape and main features of proportional, linear, inverse proportional, and quadratic graphs. Different versions of Excel spreadsheets allow students to explore how the shape and the position of a graph changes when the constants in its...

This resource contains ten instant maths ideas using spreadsheets to solve mathematical problems. Mathematical topics explored include: * solving equations to complete a think of a number puzzle * completion of magic squares * exploring different sequences * the ‘Rich Aunt’ problem * an exploration of cubic graphs...

This resource from SMILE contains 21 activities for using spreadsheets to solve mathematical problems. Teachers' notes give advice on appropriate ways of using the activity and identifying particular support students may need when using a spreadsheet.

The activities are:

Favourite colours...

This task is designed to assess how well students understand applying Pythagoras’ theorem to finding the gradient of a slope.

The task looks at points plotted on a set of axes. The points are joined to make a quadrilateral. The first task is to calculate the length and slope of each side. Students must then...

This resource from Inquiry Maths states "a square fits into a circle better than a circle fits into a square" leading to a rich task exploring areas, ratios and percentages.

A square fits better in a circle than a circle fits in a square describes the prompt and suggests a variety of ways in...

On the left, a rectangle is given and the challenge is to construct a square to the right of it that has an equal area and sharing a common vertex with the rectangle. The construction must be...

This activity involves matching 3-D shapes with plans and elevations. It may be suitable for group work. The first page of the handout shows an example of a 3-D shape with the plan, front and side elevations. There are five other pages of diagrams to be duplicated to make a card sort for the ten 3-D shapes.

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