1. In October Apple released the next generation of iPhone, the 4S
Photograph by Yutaka Tsutano used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) licence

2. All of the mobile phone operators in the UK have different price plans and options for the new phone. As customers pay for more minutes, texts and data download, the price of the handset reduces.
Photographs left to right : 1. by LGEPR , 2. by The GameWay, 3. by Yutaka Tsutano.
Used under Creative Commons licence 1 and 3: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) 2 Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

3. The Guardian summarised the different price plans for its readers.
Image by Neil Boyd some rights reserved

4. What do you think this graph shows?

5. I have some spare cash now so can spend up to £200 on the handset.
I run a business and travel around a lot. I need to talk to customers and download a lot of information from the internet, but I don’t text very much. My business can afford about £35 per month but I don’t want to pay out too much for the handset
All things considered, I just want to pay the least amount possible over the two years of the contract
Which contract would you recommend for each of these people?
I love texting! And I love Facebook but don’t use the internet for much else. I don’t make that many calls each month.
I have some spare cash now so can spend up to £200 on the handset.

6. Phone contracts Description Prompts and probing questions Extension
This resource challenges students to sort and understand complex information and explain their reasoning using the context of
mobile phone contracts. You’ll need to print out this information sheet which gives details of the pricing of the iPhone 4S from
three different providers, so that each group can use it.
Prompts and probing questions
The PowerPoint first shows the students a bar chart from The Guardian and asks what it shows. Labels and titles are revealed
on each click. Asking questions such as the following will support students in thinking through what the graph could be
representing:
what do you notice?
what do you think it means?
what could the graph be about?
The information sheet shows the pricing structure for three UK mobile companies, and students will need to use this information
to decide which contract is appropriate for each of three different users. Questions to ask about this situation might include:
what assumptions are you making?
how are you sorting out the information? What’s your starting point?
is there much difference in the three different companies?
is it worth paying a little more?
Extension
After the students have offered a solution to the problem, ask them to write a recommendation for one (two or three!) of the
people giving evidence about why they should choose a particular contract over any of the others.
Assessment
If you use the APP model of assessment then the areas to assess could include:
solve word problems and investigations from a range of contexts (using and applying mathematics level 5)
solve problems and carry through substantial tasks by breaking them into smaller, more manageable tasks… give solutions to an appropriate degree of accuracy (using and applying mathematics level 6).