Math Language Routine 5: Four the Win

Speaker: Four the Win engages students in identifying and creating matching mathematical elements by attending to structure across mathematical representations. Here’s how you do it:

Place students in pairs or groups and give each pair or group a game board. The game board will feature a 2×2 grid with four spaces. Two of the spaces will have matching elements, like an equation and a corresponding story problem, graph, or table.

One space will have an element with no match, and the final space will be blank. The students should work together to identify which elements match. Then, they should fill in the blank space by creating a match for the unmatched element. 

Encourage students to match based on mathematical structure, not surface features. This helps them to make connections across representations, and they can also get creative in co-crafting the final match.

Now go ahead and give For the Win a try!