For the summer break – some Maths puzzles and activities!
I have often mentioned OCR’s Maths puzzles; you can see the puzzle collection on BlueSky. Here’s the last puzzle of the academic year – appropriate for the summer!
#MEIConf2025 was great again.Here’s the final #OCRMathsPuzzle of the academic year.Each summer symbol in the grid below represents a number.The product of the numbers in each row and in each column equal the given totals.Work out the number that each symbol represents.#UKMathsChat #surds
On Transum Mathematics, you can find many suggestions for holiday activities. The puzzle illustrated is a level 1 puzzle; 12 levels are available.
The holiday collection offers numerous activities to encourage students to continue learning during the holidays. These are categorised, and we have a lovely mixture of learning, puzzles, and games to make students think.
Geometry includes a collection of puzzles from Catriona Agg, who has made a collection of screenshots (Google Drive link) freely available.
Catriona Agg
Given three squares and a rectangle. What’s the shaded area?
In response to this puzzle, Rob Smith created an Autograph file. Rob has set this up to change both squares, and you can also move a point on the smaller square.
You can download a free pdf copy of Stephen Siklos’ Advanced Problems in Mathematics. Whilst written to support students taking STEP examination papers, Advanced Problems in Mathematics is excellent preparation for any undergraduate mathematics course.
Following each question, you will find a discussion and a full solution. The clear Contents page lists all 75 problems.
Further Resources
Recommended Mathematics reading from the University of Oxford (scroll right down the page).
If you have not come across the HELM Project before, the project was designed to support the mathematical education of engineering students and includes an extensive collection of notes which include very clear worked examples. Whilst the workbooks cover the basic engineering mathematics and statistics teaching for first and second year students in a typical UK undergraduate engineering degree many of the workbooks include content appropriate for A Level Mathematics and particularly, Further Mathematics. For easy access to these resources, the HELM Project Workbooks are hosted by Loughborough University’s Mathematics Learning Support Centre. Alternatively, the complete set is hosted by the Open University. To access the Open University resources you will need to create an account (easy and free), this will also give you access to the numerous free online courses.
Looking at Loughborough University’s Mathematics Learning Support Centre as well as providing access to the workbooks, we can additionally read about the past, present and future of the resources and see the details of the HELM consortium members and their roles.
You will see from Loughborough’s description that each workbook varies in length from 25 pages to 75 pages (average 50 pages), and includes Mathematics (and Statistics) for engineering simply explained, worked examples, tasks and exercises with answers provided. Note the last workbooks in the series, Workbook 49 is a Student’s Guide and Workbook 50 a Tutor’s Guide.
The Student guide includes a description of the format of the workbooks and a comprehensive list of contents.
Thinking about the remaining A Level paper in Mechanics and Statistics for many students, it may be helpful to highlight some resources.
Many resources for teaching Mechanics and Statistics can be found on my A Level teaching resources page; this post highlights just some of the useful Mechanics and Statistics examples that may be helpful for revision.
Hodder My Revision Notes You might find these free Hodder Revision Resources useful; questions and fully worked solutions for each section of the book are provided, and whilst the documents refer to the books, they are complete in themselves. The free document pdf file) has questions with fully worked answers.
A Level Knowledge Organisers This page includes a set of knowledge organisers from Lucyjc. These resources are available free on TES Resources: Mechanics. All include Key Words and Definitions and What Do I Need to Know sections.
You will find an excellent collection of practice questions – try key skills for Mechanics and Statistics. Select All Skills, and view the Mechanics and Statistics menus. The resources for each section include key skills.
DrFrostMaths Key Skills
Dr Frost Teaching resources Select All Skills, and see the Mechanics menu. The resources for each section include teaching resources.
The latest resources are so good. Look at this PowePoint on Displacement-Time & Velocity-Time Graphs, for example. Animations help to explain the concepts.
There is now an A Level section on Dr Austin Maths with a growing collection of resources. We see some useful introductory resources for Mechanics.
Dr Austin Maths – A Level
From Stoke Maths comes very attractively presented high-quality resources. Look under A Level on the Padlet and we can see several sets of resources including A Level Starters and Revision questions, and Spot the Mistake resources for Year 1 and Year 2 content. Looking at the Spot the Mistake PowerPoints for example, as you can see in the image there is a great collection of questions that include full answers. It’s brilliant to see a Mechanics collection.
The revision question starters provide very useful question sets.
