Real Crime: English and Maths Workbook

The Hatton Garden Robbery: A True Crime Workbook

30 pages of English and Maths, working towards GCSE foundation.

Six men, most of them pensioners. One concrete wall. Fourteen million pounds in cash, gold and diamonds.

The Hatton Garden robbery is the kind of story that makes a young person lean in before they have even realised they are doing English and Maths. It has a vault, a 50 centimetre wall, a drill called a Hilti DD350, a gang the newspapers nicknamed the Diamond Wheezers, and a getaway involving ordinary plastic wheelie bins. It really happened, the men were caught, and it turns out to be one of the most useful hooks a Foundation tier teacher could ask for.

This booklet takes that story and builds a complete English and Maths session around it, written in calm WJEC Foundation style. Your young person reads a full news article, answers reading questions with the marks shown so they learn to pace their answers, has a go at a writing task, warms up their number skills, works through ten worded Maths questions, and finishes by designing their own heist film with a budget that has to add up. Every page is laid out to be calm and uncluttered, in a dyslexia-friendly format with plenty of space to think.

It is built for the learner who has decided they are no good at exams. The tone never talks down to them. The marks are explained. The working is scaffolded. The story does the heavy lifting of holding their attention so the skills can go in quietly underneath.

Why young people actually engage with it

A real crime, told as a proper story, not a dry worked example

Number, money, percentages, ratio, fractions, time, averages and speed, all anchored to one memorable case

Reading and writing tasks in genuine WJEC Foundation style, with mark allocations shown

A creative film-pitch finale that pulls English and Maths together

Calm, plain language with no exam-room panic

What is inside

A full Hatton Garden news article in WJEC Foundation reading style

Five WJEC-style reading questions with mark allocations

A choice of writing tasks

A mental maths starter

Ten worded Maths questions, split into non-calculator and calculator sections

A combined English and Maths creative project

Full answers at the back

A page on free reading aloud apps for anyone who finds reading from a page heavy

A watch and listen page with curated YouTube search terms for news clips, documentaries and films.

This booklet has no age label. It is written for curious minds, and curious minds come in all shapes, sizes and ages. If the topics sound interesting to your young person, it will work for them.

Format: digital download, A4, dyslexia-friendly. Comic Sans MS 14pt, teal and magenta colour scheme. Word and PDF.

NEST Pembrokeshire

nestpembrokeshire.co.uk