This looks extremely useful as a guide for L2 students before starting their short course: that spiky profile thing.

This search query produces links from which you can download the diagnostic tests for L2, L1 and the three entry levels for Skills for Life Numeracy. These pdfs are not on the archive site, so the links from readwriteplus archived pages won't work

Just something to use the lesson before the second GOLA computer based test for my Friday morning level 1 numeracy group. I try to teach through understanding most of the course, but some specific targeted exam prep is needed.

Just something to use the lesson before the first GOLA computer based test for my Friday morning level 1 numeracy group. Almost everyone passed.

Even better, a line chart with a truncated vertical axis and a nice thought provoking table of data

There is a data handling Level 2 numeracy exercise hiding in this data set.

A collection of 30 short whole number questions on cards. Each question can be categorised as addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. There are four cards with the titles of the operations. Students were asked to work in groups to sort the questions into each operation and to make a note of the keywords that told them which operation was relevant.

Used with L2 students for revision and with L1 students for number practice. You need to set your printer to print the cards 4 to a sheet.

Just a set of number lines on a side of A4. -5 to +5 twice, then -10 to +10 twice then -20 to + 20 twice. Helps with the revision

Nice little patience game for equivalent ratios

Back to basics on fractions, I want to approach them from a variety of angles without being confusing. This booklet is a useful reminder of approaches.

Very handy! You have to try it a couple of times to make sure you don't get scientific notation in the answers

Topical use of data visuaisation

Slick web interface and nice range of choices, but they put the questions in columns already. That's the skill I want people to practice. The old 0.75 + 1.65 + 3 + 7.1 trick

Multiply £12.99 by 15 by doing 13 times 15 and subtracting 15p. Then do the 13 times 15 by adding 130 and 65. Quick exact methods sheet to accompany a whole class discussion.

Prompted by watching an excellent student calculate 30 divided by 2.5 using long division...

Match the correct calculation with the situation described in words. Part of a lesson to support students taking the Numeracy Certificate Level 2 course.

This starter is designed to encourage visual recognition of the main types of formula so we can discuss the 'trigger' words in the questions. A later activity gets down to discriminating between the correct calculation and the common incorrect ones for each type of formula

"Perhaps the most influential thinker about education in the late twentieth century, Paulo Freire has been particularly popular with informal educators with his emphasis on dialogue and his concern for the oppressed."

I'm getting huge mileage from the cuts agenda. Budget 2010 figures for government income and expenditure in the billions. Averages and data presentation. Ironic isn't it?

If you make people redundant and those who remain take a pay cut, it is possible for the mean wage to rise. The median gives a clearer picture of the changes.

Eval: students got the point very quickly (a touch of the paulo freires). The feeling was that it would have been better to have different wages rather than the same figure each time, so I'll modify this handout. That modification would also increase the usefulness as a revision aid for mean and median. The percentage change calculation caused some searching in notes as well.

Data gathering - idea for numeracy class i teach in a part of Birmingham near the green belt. Handout with Orion asterism and a sky view around 10pm

Measuring task for a Numeracy Level 1 group so people get used to metric units and reading scales. One side A4 with some instructions to find objects between 30cm and 1m and then objects larger than 1m. Students asked to repeat measurements for a discussion of sources of error and consistency in measurements.

You need one 5m steel tape measure between two (or three) students.

Two sides A4 with a summary of the basic formulas/ideas in a table (probability formula, expected frequency formula, probabilities add to one formula).

Four questions: complete the table on a spinner with expected frequency, balls in a bag, fraction line question (find events that will have a probability of a given fraction), and a two way frequency table question.

The fraction line question went down very well tonight,

22 questions about basic number work (no ratio or fractions addition, they come later) with little vocabulary or context, mostly symbols including the 'fill in the gaps' questions.

Then 10 story questions, including a two stage percentage change question and a reverse percentage question.

Both with numerical answers, two sides A4.

Free numeracy lesson, thanks to the bbc

Just a quick summary of the box and whisker plot and a question with the min, lq, median, uq and max given and a scaled grid to draw the chart.

Meant as a quick 10 minute revision task and a summary for revision by the students nearer the Module 1 exam.

Another one side 10 minute question to check recall of the vocabulary, spotting the outliers and drawing line of best fit. Data set about age and blood pressure after exercise. One data point has been fiddled so it is clearly an outlier. Asks for how removing this point would change the correlation. Line of best fit and a prediction question.

One side A4 with a frequency table, a spare column for the cumulative frequencies and a grid with scales to plot the curve on. Questions ask for median, quartiles and iqr. Also a question about what percentage more than a certain value of the variable.

Meant for a quick 10 minute revision exercise for Module 1 exam soon, and so the students have (another) one side summary of cumulative frequency.

Just for revision for the module 1 exams soon. A frequency diagram question with grid and data set all on one side of A4.

I quickly sketch the answers on the interactive whiteboard using 'overlay', then we make some revision notes based on what each student finds they need to remember.

Two side worksheet with the definition of an event, and an outcome and some questions based on coins, dice and packs of cards.

The first activity was designed to get people talking. A much better talking point was the National Lottery!

Finding the value of a unit fraction, then generalising to the value of any fraction of a quantity. The numbers are 'easy' in the sense they are simple multiples of the denominators. There are a couple of extension questions.

There has to be a numeracy task in here somewhere...

numeracy alert! Ratio question based on the copper/Zinc/Magnanese/Nickel percentages. Do your students get allergies when counting change? Could be the Nickel.

Very useful. Plain grids with common tessellations. No fancy stuff and no colours. Really useful!

Wonderful. Came across this looking for information about growing potatoes for a numeracy worksheet (don't ask)

A one side worksheet that shows photos of two identically priced 400g tins of tomatoes, one shelf label showing as £1.45 per Kg and the other showing as £2.42 per Kg.

Thanks to the management for giving me a superb functional skills like question.

A quick opportunistic worksheet on winter temperatures across the UK, emphasizing the colder end of the spectrum.

Not a bad little crossword generator. Print to PDF and then load into Inkscape to get rid of the little buttons. You have to ungroup the objects. There is an annoying length limit on both the words and clues

Old data: 50 000 leaving with 20 000 new recruits and 12 000 from overseas. The loss rate appears to be something close to 50 000 / 400 000 = 12.5%, higher than the 8% benchmark figure but may have changed now.

400 000 Nurses in UK. I can feel a numeracy activity coming on...

Flash applet prints nets of a nice range of shapes straight to your printer. No way to save the image directly or to export as an illustrator file, so I just printed it using the pdf 'printer' then pulled it into inkscape.

These are going to have to get made...

The first exercises need accurate cutting out of shapes, the later ones are fine for those questions about fitting small boxes into drawers.

Works on Chrome but not Firefox for some reason.

Saves my brain a job

Link across to skills workshop summaries for level 1 and level 2 numeracy

Useful - after a fragment for scale questions

Useful for questions

What I call the Z sheets. Useful for embedding fractions ideas, but also good for tables and spotting patterns

Nice puzzle sheets that involve the recognition of shapes &c. Tends to assume that cancelling down is ok

I fed a scheme of work I found on Maggie H's skillsworkshop.org into wordle... 'Revise' comes out huge! 'Life' is rather smaller, and 'experiments' is tiny. Wordle asks for a user name when you save a completed wordle to the gallery. These names are NOT unique, so I didn't do all the ones with Keith as the user name! I've just worked out how to convert wordles to WMFs so that you can put them into PowerPoints as scalable objects rather than bitmaps.

Very nice, especially with Wordle live demo. Recognition of all those slightly different words and phrases we use to talk about the four functions.

Hilda Taba's Inductive Strategy - see below in the context of Numeracy vocabulary

Wordle to explore Maths words

OK stuff on averages (average wage should be a median &c) with examples including the Mayor of London who has just put foot in mouth again.