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This task depends upon members of the group noticing the needs of others and responding. It requires learners to:
Algebra Match
Age 11 to 16
Challenge Level 
Why do this problem?
This team-building task is designed to develop learners' team-working skills. If you wish to learn more about these skills and find other team-builder tasks look at this article.This task depends upon members of the group noticing the needs of others and responding. It requires learners to:
- respond to the needs of others
- consider the needs of the whole group
- help others to do things for themselves.
Possible approach
Share the purposes of the activity and the rules with the group.Ask team leaders to hand
the 16
cards out randomly- four cards to each group member.
If you have more than four people in a group then use an observer
to ensure the team obeys the rules and notes when there is evidence
of members of the team responding to the needs of others.- Here are the rule cards.
As teams finish, ask them
to discuss the key things they have learnt about working together.
Use observers to feed into the discussions. Then spend some time
discussing observations you have made, or teams have made, as a
whole class activity, talking about how they might work more
effectively next time.
Key questions
As this task is designed
to be carried out in silence, the use of key questions is
inappropriate during the task, but can inform discussion of team
behaviours when the task is complete.
- Can you give any good examples of when someone noticed what you needed and tried to help?
Possible extension
Other skill-building tasks can be found by going to this article.Possible support
Other skill-building tasks can be found by going to this article.You may also like
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An algebra task which depends on members of the group noticing the needs of others and responding.