Go-to’s: My go to activities: flexible, easy to prep and explain, engaging for students and their brains. (Inspired by one of those ‘so what do you do …’ conversations with another teacher)
Activity: Card game, matching pairs based on “Concentration” (aka Memory)
Theory: We need a break from worksheets. Mostly: I find my students struggle with equivalence and recognizing two items in different formats as the same value, concentration focuses them on these relationships.
Example: We’re easing in to a new term with a word problem review, so I made Concentration cards. Once half of each pair was an expression in English (5 less than 16, the sum of 2 and 7…), its pair was either a mathematical expression (16-5) or a final value (9).
Prep:
Fold a piece of paper into small squares (8ths or 12ths work for me) to hand write or use a template to type (Next time I’m using a blank business card template – they’re a nice size and should print just fine without the fancy paper)
You want pairs of cards, blank on the back. I like values that are equivalent but not equal, so an expression and an answer, a definition and vocab word etc. I find 10 – 15 pairs (20 to 30 cards) is a nice level of challenge.
Print and cut out a deck per student-group.
Pro tips/Learned it the hard way
Use card stock or dark-colored paper – I’ve had crafty students figure out how to read through my lighter paper versions.
Use a different color for each deck of cards so you don’t spend forever reuniting lost/scrambled/mis-placed cards.
In class:
Remind students how to play. (I’m always surprised that people don’t know or have forgotten this game)
In short: The cards go face down on the table. Each student takes a turn trying to make a pair by turning over two cards and looking for a match. Winner is the player with the most pairs at the end.
Here are full instructions
I like groups of 2 or 3. Any larger and there’s too much downtime. Groups play until all of the cards have been paired or until a set time has elapsed.
Pro tips/Learned it the hard way
A reminder to return cards to their original places is valuable. There’s always one group that inadvertently ups the difficulty level by rearranging the cards.
Extension Possibilities
Students create a new pair or pairs of cards with their own examples.
Works for:
- Vocab (word on one card, definition on the other)
- Conversions (e.g. 1 foot = 12 inches)
- Equivalent values (e.g. equivalent fractions, simplified and expanded expressions)
- The math equivalent of sight words, those things you want them to recognize quickly (e.g. perfect squares)
- Really, pretty much anything….
