The following resource has been kindly shared on the TES Maths website. It is available to download for free by registering.

What is it?

Excel is such a wonderful and versatile tool, and in the hands of the right author it can lead to some wonderful mathematical resources. And the author of this particular resource seems to have the golden touch! They have utilised Excel’s wonderful random number generator function to create a series of starter activities, covering a whole range of mathematical content, which not only work out the answer for you, but which also can generate an infinite number of examples. Wonderful stuff.

How can it be used?

Improving students’ confidence and fluidity in dealing with numbers and routine skills is absolutely crucial to their long term success. There is no point trying to teach them simplifying fractions if they are not confident with their times tables, and solving equations is going to be a nightmare if their negative number skills are not up to scratch. So resources like this that can be projected on the interactive whiteboard at the start of a lesson are ideal. Those 5 minutes ensure a pacey start to the lesson, get students’ brains warmed up, and crucially help develop those routine skills upon which all of mathematics is built.

Thank you for sharing!

Craig Barton

Download Excel Lesson Starters

View the author’s other resources

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