Description/Aim

Traditional Loop cards. What is interesting is the diversity of ways and games that can be played using them and how the organisation of the way in which they are used can facilitate class discussion revealing pupils understanding of algebraic notation to their peers and to the teacher.

See the resource on "Factorising Quadratics" for follow up lessons on this topic.

Why we like this activity ….

The activity is accessible to all, regardless of confidence with algebra. It is Kinaesthetic rather than written, which will suits certain students. It looks a lot more inviting than 20 questions from a textbook! It allows students to learn from each other.

The main advantage of this method is that it encourages lots of inter-student discourage and debate, clarifying and exemplifying their current understanding (from which I find I still often learn a lot about student's perceptions and understandings) and hopefully moving towards the mathematical understanding with help from their peers. Knowledge, I think, always seems more accessible if it comes from another student rather than a teacher ("if they can do it, I must be able to if I really try").

How this activity be used ….

My preferred organisation for these sort of card games, is that they work in pairs (confident with less confident) and that there is a merit/prize for whichever team gets them all correct provided that either of them can explain to me their reasons why any two cards have been put together (to ensure one student doesn't take control/do all the work). Moreover, I then like to get one of the pair to move round the class looking at other groups choices and the second to stay with their choice to explain/'defend' and answer the questions of any visiting pair (20mins). However, these cards can be used in any number of ways, traditional class loop card game sitting round in a circle, the person with the card they think follows the first raises their hand and reads it out aloud (5-10mins). Every pair has the cards, teacher goes round the pairs, each pair holds a card for all to see and says what it means in words e.g. 3A + B means three times a number plus one lot of another number. Advantage of this is the teacher can start with the less confident students who can then choose cards they feel confident with, or a challenge - its in their control (5-10mins)

They can be laminated and kept as class set of 15 envelopes for 15 pairs, or left on computer and students move the cards around on screen, or copy and pasted into an Interactive Whiteboard Software such as Notebook or ActivStudio etc.

What to expect when using this activity – from our experience

Lots of interesting and often unexpected questions. Teacher can learn a lot about his/her students. I also feel to get the maximum out of this activity it helps for the Teacher to be flexible and ready to adapt to the classes needs, posing questions based on students current conceptual understand e.g. "Why doesn't 3A+B=3AB?", "Why does 4B - 2 = 2B?". Having mini-whiteboards ready, or returning to such questions in the plenary and asking all students to write their explanation for why the two above statements can't be true, gest everyone involved and learning from each other and the teacher learning about their students!

Extra Notes