Attracting the Customer
This set of Cre8ate maths activities explores three ways in which retailers and product manufacturers may seek to persuade customers to either buy more of their product or encourage customer loyalty. In ‘Prize draw’ students explore sequences and series. ‘Offers’ involves money calculations and comparison…
5/5- Publication year: 2010 to date
- Group work
Containers
This Cre8ate maths activity requires students to calculate areas of polygons and to appreciate the link with volumes of prisms. It may also involve detailed exploration of similarity.
ISBNs
This set of Cre8ate maths activities requires students to think about place value, divisibility and remainders. It also requires logical thinking. Computer codes with check digits are widely used in the retail and banking sector. This activity focuses on one long-established code – the International Standard Book Number…
Supermarket Car Parks
These activities from Cre8ate maths explore the efficient use of space in car parks. These are two-dimensional ‘best fit’ problems which require logic and a systematic approach to find effective solutions. They give students the chance to devise and test out strategies using systematic trial-and-improvement techniques.…
- 4/5
- Publication year: 2010 to date
- Group work
Hand Eye Coordination
This hand eye co-ordination activity from Cre8ate maths involves the collection of real data, hypothesis testing and scatter graphs. The extensions may also include the use of a variety of averages. Health professionals often have to assess a wide variety of attributes including hand eye co-ordination. This topic provides a fun…
Ferries
This Cre8ate maths activity allows the opportunity to discuss the modelling function of mathematics. The tasks allow students to develop their own strategies and to consider the idea of an ‘efficient’ algorithm. In addition, 'First fit and full bins' activity involves work on ratio and pie charts.
Pixel Perfection
This investigation from Cre8ate maths involves students in finding the best size screen for a television. If you have a large flat screen and view a standard analogue or digital picture the individual pixels are visible if you are sitting too close to the screen. Working in small groups of 3 or 4, students measure the pixel density…
Pit Stop
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 first work…
Crystal Shapes 1
This activity from Cre8ate maths explores the rotational symmetry of carefully chosen crystals. Initially students work with plain and coloured nets of cubes may use trial and improvement methods to find different possible rotations of symmetry, before exploring ways to be systematic in their investigation. For example, they might…
Crystal Shapes 2
This activity from Cre8ate maths explores Platonic solids, which are formed from regular polygons where all their faces are identical and all their vertices are identical too. Students are told that there are only five platonic solids, which they can build using triangles, squares and pentagons. Completing the Matching shapes…
Stretchiness
This Cre8ate maths activity draws on measuring stretchiness which involves the collection of real data, calculating percentages and experimental design. This resource models one way in which engineers use their knowledge of mathematics to investigate the properties of materials. Here students investigate the stretchiness of jelly…
- 5/5
- Publication year: 2010 to date
- Teacher guidance
Printing
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 of their booklet,…
Rabbits
In this Cre8ate maths activity students learn that a simulation is a model of a real situation. Data for the birth rate of rabbits is provided and is used by students to develop their own model to simulate the breeding of rabbits in a field and consider the likely damage to the farmer’s crop. Initially this is done as a recording…
Hair and Beauty
This resource from Cre8ate maths is designed to help students develop their understanding of the data handling cycle. Initially students will match 14 questions with their answers, prompting discussion as some are not relevant to the topic and others could have multiple answers, but there is only one way to complete the task so…
Classroom Olympics
These Cre8ate maths activities require the use of averages, ranges, percentages, histograms, stem and leaf displays, pie charts, and tables to make comparisons, interpretations, and conclusions. They also provide real data about pupils for analysis. Performing the “How far can you …?” events in the classroom…
What's in Your Bowl?
This Cre8ate maths activity motivates the use of averages, ranges, percentages, bar charts, pie charts, and tables to make comparisons, interpretations and conclusions. The students can perform the "What is in your bowl?" activities to investigate serving amounts and what is eaten for breakfast. The data collection activities…
Nappy Changing Challenge
The Nappy Changing Challenge from Cre8ate maths provides real data about students for analysis. They undertake a timed, practical, exercise of folding a towelling nappy and putting it onto a toy baby doll. Throughout the task students complete a form for the Nappy challenge and record their completed data in an excel file. The…
Running a Club
These Cre8ate maths activities draw on the mathematics of combinatorial thinking and involve a set of functional maths activities.
- 4/5
- Publication year: 2010 to date
- Experiment
Islamic Design
This Cre8ate maths activity focuses on reflection and thinking about translation or rotation. It also uses co-ordinates to develop a non-standard transformation. The topic provides rich opportunities for cross curricular work and can also provide the focus for off-site activities.
- 4/5
- Publication year: 2010 to date
- Activity sheet
The Greenest Route
This Cre8ate maths activity deals with the external costs of transport which affect society but which are not paid for by the transport users who cause them. Road, rail, air and water are compared. Mathematical connections involve working on inverse proportion, conversion calculations, compound percentage change and information…
Working for Efficiency
This Cre8ate maths topic looks at simplified versions of three different network problems that are encountered in practical logistical planning. Paper rounds offers the opportunity for reasoning and proof as the arguments needed to establish Euler's theorem are within their grasp. It also, along with Cable connections and…
Ordering
These Cre8ate maths activities develop multi-stage logistical thinking. The Planning ahead puzzle develops process skills of problem solving: working systematically and creating, describing and experimenting with systematic strategies. Making tea is concerned with finding the best way to organise time and draws on the Critical…
Getting On
This set of Cre8ate maths activities requires pupils to interact with a variety of data sets and to use logical thinking skills to interpret what they find. Providing for the old also involves interpreting scales, calculations and consideration of ratio and proportion.
Accessible Spaces
This set of Cre8ate maths activities asks pupils to explore the ways in which their classroom and school can be made wheelchair accessible. If all the activities are attempted, the topic will be an extended one. Mathematical connections involve making sense of plans and diagrams through interpreting scale diagrams. The construction…
Packaging
This topic explores flat designs which can be folded and used to package food and drink. These Cre8ate maths activities provide rich experience of visualising 3 dimensional shapes from 2 dimensional representations. In Four Chocolates and It Takes the Biscuit!, studentss will need to measure accurately and construct accurate diagrams.…
Minimise or Supersize
In this resource from Cre8ate maths, students critically compare nutritional measures and calculate their daily energy requirements. Initially students fill in the worksheet Can we eat what we like, to prompt a whole class discussion about the consequences of a bad diet. They then use the Sugar, salt and fat worksheet, to explore…
Going Bananas
In this Cre8ate maths topic students work out what a portion size looks like, find out whether they are eating enough fruit and vegetables and compare the costs of making and buying smoothies. In How much is in a portion, students estimate weights of fruit and vegetables then weigh each item and calculate their percentage error. Five-a-day…
- 4/5
- Publication year: 2010 to date
- Activity sheet
Boxes and Bottles
Boxes and bottles come in all shapes and sizes. These Cre8ate maths activities explore some of the mathematics behind packaging decisions taken by manufacturers, they provide a platform for students to make conjectures and find efficient ways of recording results to justify claims they have made. In Boxing stock cubes students…
Painting the Playground
This activity from Cre8ate maths lends itself to the development of personal thinking and learning skills, based on activities for a playground. Making a maze involves students in quite complex 2-D visualisation, working with a prepared spreadsheet, in excel, which encourages students to refine and redraft their work. Jumping…
Bridges and Structures
These activities from Cre8ate maths sets challenges which require pupils to be constructive, creative and think strategically about simple structures. Working in groups of 3 or 4, students create structures from a single sheet of A4 paper, the tallest free-standing tower and the longest possible span between two end supports.…
Maths in Art
This resource from Cre8ate maths investigates the maths found in work by two artists. Both activities have an accessible starting point and both can be extended to provide a real challenge. An artistic puzzle uses a sculpture by Sol LeWitt entitled ‘123454321’ which is in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and challenges…
Working with Photos
This activity from Cre8ate maths develops understanding of enlargement. Students work in groups and, intuitively, sort sets of photos to identify those which have been enlarged from an original image. They then justify their decisions and share their explanations with the rest of the class. Photo sets three and four may cause…