How To Use A Placemat Activity
The Placemat activity is a good partner activity while students are actively learning a new skill or as a review.
Activity Directions:
With a partner, students solve all four equations on a placemat. After both students agree on the answers or solutions for the problems on the page, they then add the answers together to find the “Sum”. The teacher easily and quickly checks the “Sum” to evaluate the students’ understanding which allows the students to know if they made a mistake.
Teacher Setup:
To make a placemat, write or type four problems, each in their own quadrant of the page. Place a circle in the center for the sum of the four answers. The problems should have some sort of numeric value to be used in the “Sum”. For example, the activity shown above asks for the slope in one equation and for the y-intercept in another equation to be used in the sum.
Print several copies of each placemat on one color of paper and slide them into plastic page protectors. The students can use dry erase markers on the plastic and easily wipe off their work when finished. Sometimes I print two different placemats with similar topics, each on their own color of paper, and put them back-to-back into the plastic page protectors.
Here are two of my Placemat activities for you to try. Click on the covers below to download the free activities.
Free Algebra Activities
For an explanation of a typical day’s list of activities, please see my articles “What To Do With Faster Students” and "A Typical Day In My Flipped Algebra Class". For more about additional activities, see "Some Of My Favorite Algebra Activities", "How To Use A Quiz Quiz Activity", "How To Use A Sum It Up Activity", and "How To Use A Problem Pass Activity".
