This SMILE resource contains four packs of games, investigations, worksheets and practical activities supporting the teaching and learning of patterns and generalisations, from finding number patterns on a hundred-square grid to exploring converging sequences.

Patterns and generalisations pack one...

This resource contains eleven instant maths ideas covering a whole range of suggestions that may be used as starter questions, extension questions or probing questions to assess understanding. Topics include: comparing fractions by converting to percentages, exploring the difference between increasing by 200% and...

Perseverance is a NASA rover that landed on Mars, in February 2021.  The rover is searching for past evidence for life on Mars and collecting samples to be returned to Earth with a planned sample return mission, from NASA and the European Space Agency, ESA.  

This resource activity pack supports the video...

The Pit stop activities from Cre8ate maths are designed to motivate students to investigate the performance of model solar cars through a series of racing challenges. To do this activity you will need a set of model solar racing cars which are often shared between design technology and science departments. Students...

Six instant maths ideas covering the titles given to each column, the importance of place value in expressing values and the problems that can occur when numbers are written incorrectly. Ideas include finding how many numbers can be made using certain digits, what the value of a particular digit represents in a...

This resource contains four instant maths ideas, ideal for use as starter activities, extension work or as probing questions to assess understanding. The activities provide students with the opportunity to photograph and consider the plans of unusual objects, create plans and elevation drawings of solids made from...

This resource contains a series of lessons which are designed to extend students’ knowledge and understanding of plastics and plastic waste on a global scale. Linking to materials and their properties, the environment, recycling and design and technology, they contain investigations and activities aimed at both...

This activity from Cre8ate maths involves students in designing a playground. They will have to decide upon a suitable outdoor space and consider key features relevant to their design. Scaled templates can be used to trial several layouts giving consideration to safety...

This resource contains 21 instant maths ideas designed to explore the properties of polygons. Practical activities include creating polygons by folding newspaper, exploring the number of triangles that can be drawn on a triangular dotted grid and creating, naming and classifying quadrilaterals. Students are asked...

This excel file deals with the four operations on positive and negative numbers giving practice at a variety of calculations.

The first interactive sheet shows a table with -5 to 5 both along the top and down the side...

This resource contains four instant maths ideas exploring how to represent data graphically. In the first task students record how long they watch TV, group the results and draw two separate graphs to compare boys and girls. The second task requires students to consider what type of diagram is suitable to represent...

On December 15th 2015 European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake launched on the six month Principia mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Principia was named after Isaac Newton’s Naturalis Principia Mathematica, describing the principal laws of motion and gravity.

The education and inspiration of...

This Cre8ate maths resource looks at challenges derived from printing processes where both logic and geometric thinking are required. In Folding booklets students are given a piece of A4 paper which they fold to form a 16 page booklet and, without cutting the folds in the paper, are challenged to number the pages...

This resource contains ten instant maths ideas covering a whole range of suggestions that may be used as starter questions, extension questions or probing questions to assess understanding. Areas covered include: * exploring the different answers that can be achieved by completing parts of a complicated calculation...

This resource contains seventeen instant maths ideas beginning by exploring probability scales and simple probability. Students are asked to invent a fair game, to conduct an experiment using two dice and to discuss a number of statements relating to probability. Further suggestions include experimenting with three...