Find Someone Who Knows - Combining Like Terms & Variables - Math Review Activity

Engage your whole class by playing one of my favorite review games....Find Someone Who Knows!

This edition of FSWK focuses on combining like terms with variables. This is the perfect activity when students are being introduced to the concepts of variables (with and without coefficients).

This review game takes approximately 15 minutes, and is a perfect closing activity. I also tend to use FSWK at the start of class before whole-class instruction.

In this PDF file you get:

• Link to a Google Slides file with the questions ready to go in a fun winter theme (courtesy of Slidesgo). Answers are found in the speaker notes.
• Link to a Google Doc of the student answer page (2 answer sheets per page).
• Instructions on how to play.

How Find Someone Who Knows works:

• Students get up and mingle around the classroom.

• Each time a new question is put on the board, they need to Find Someone Who Knows the answer to that question. (I tend not to read the question out loud as it is a fun, energetic activity. I sometimes add a sound effect into the Slides so they know a new question is up, I'll announce "Find Someone Who Knows!", or I'll use one of the sound effects items I keep in class. It's always fun to watch how eagerly they read the questions to each other).

• When the student finds someone who knows, the person they found tells him/her the answer. The original student writes down what he/she was told. Then, there is a space provided for the answer giver to sign his/her name to agree that, yep, that's the answer I told you!

• After students finish, they return to their seats so we can review the answers as a whole class.

My students LOVE this as it gives them a chance to move around the room and talk with each other. I always smile with pride when students who aren't normally the most confident get to become experts and have students eagerly trying to find an answer from them.

I hope that you have fun with this activity in your classroom.