by Sharon Derbyshire | Mar 4, 2020 | Data, Statistics & Probability, Revision, Teaching Ideas & Tools |
A quick blog to share free set of pie chart resources, require no-prep printable downloads, that we produced when NumberLoving joined up with LittleStreams in collaboration.

The worksheets produced by Littlestreams help introduce how to calculate angles in order to construct Pie Charts. Once pupils are able to construct, you can move them into completing the NumberLoving Treasure Hunt. This requires pupils to interpret pie charts; finding amounts from pie chart sectors and includes questions like those included in Higher EdExcel and AQA GCSE 9-1 Maths papers.
The two resources can be downloaded for free using the links below;
LittleStreams drawing pie charts worksheets Free Download

Check out our Teacher Hack blog post below which will mean no excuses when pupils say “I haven’t got a protractor”! Maths Teacher Hack- Part 1
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Thank you for reading
NumberLoving Sharon
by Sharon Derbyshire | Dec 14, 2014 | Events, Games & Puzzles |
The week ahead is the last week for many schools before the Christmas holidays and so we have collected some of our favourite Christmaths activities. We would also like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year which brings new and exciting developments for NumberLoving, watch this space!
Christmas Mysteries
Laura has created two mysteries called “how many elves” and “white Christmas”. Mysteries is a thinking skills activities in which pupils use the clue cards, organising the information, making calculations where necessary in order to answer the questions posed. These can be downloaded here .
How many elves?
In this task students must use knowledge of number, percentages and time to work out how many elves Santa needs to hire to make all the Christmas gifts on time!
White Christmas
In this task students have to use the clues to work out where in the UK is most likely to have a white Christmas this year. All data is accurate. Students could then plot the places on a map to see if they notice any patterns in the probabilities they have calculated.
The Christmas Pirate Game
This game has been adapted from Mr Paul Collins original Pirate Game to give it a Christmas edge. The Christmas version of the game can be downloaded from TES here. Mr Collins blog of Christmas & maths activities is definitely worth checking out here.
Christmas Maths Relay Race
Chris Smith’s relay races include a Christmas themed relay race and can be downloaded from the TES here. For more details on how to run a relay race check out our post on using relays for revision here.
Graphing
Challenge your pupils to use graphing software to create a Christmas tree like this one on Desmos here.
Looking for more ideas?
Also check out our previous posts “Christmaths Collection” and “Christmaths Collection Part 2” for more ideas of Christmas themed maths activities.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
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by Sharon Derbyshire | Mar 6, 2012 | Events, Geometry & Measure, Teaching Ideas & Tools |
This project involves measures, shape, construction, area, surface area, speed and averages, phew!

Basically students construct the da Vinci parachute which is basically a square based pyramid. Then they test their parachutes and re-design them to increase the surface area! This is the Powerpoint I use for this project, I would run this over three lessons as follows:
Lesson 1:
Play the video on slide 2 and get students to think about where the maths is in parachuting (they should come up with lots of interesting ideas). Then show them the net for the da Vinci parachute, give them (in pairs) a piece of paper (sugar paper works best) and let them construct the parachute. They need to cut a hole in the top of it about 1cm in diameter, then attach a weight of their choice (a small blob of blue-tack works well). Then they can design a data collection sheet to use in lesson 2.
Lesson 2:
You need to find somewhere the students can drop their parachutes – if you have an upstairs room then they can drop them out the window, or even better a gym with a viewing balcony. Students drop their parachutes and the other member of the pair has to time the drop, they can do the best of three and then calculate an average and the range. Back in the classroom they can then discuss how to improve the design – hopefully they will see they need to increase the surface area. So get them to calculate the surface area and then design a new parachute with a greater surface area.
Lesson 3:
Students finish constructing their re-designed parachute and then test them again, back in the classroom they can compare their two sets of results using an average and the range and conclude which design was better.
This project was planned with the brilliant maths department at All Saints Centre for Learning in Merseyside. Get in touch @numberloving and check out our free and premium resources in our NumberLoving Store.