Team up with your peers and practise giving instructions for transformations!

Working in pairs, students take turns drawing cards with two coloured shapes on them. They must use grid referencing to tell their partner where to place the start shape, and then use location, position and transformation language to describe a path for them to follow to reach the end shape. They cannot mention any other grid coordinates aside from the start shape’s position. The first pair to correctly match three cards wins!

For an added challenge, some cards use roadblocks like crosses and fences to block access to specific pathways, requiring students to get more creative in how they reach the end point.

This download includes:

1. Six game boards in high and low colour options (print one per student, or have teams share one board)
2. 36 task cards in increasing levels of difficulty
3. Optional recording sheet (2 to a page) for students to plan their path and instructions – this makes for a great easy tool to check for understanding!

Simply print on thick card, slide into a write and wipe sleeve and use whiteboard markers to play, allowing you to reuse over and over again.

Top Teacher Tips:

1. This game is flexible and allows you to create additional rules to increase the challenge. Some of our favourites include allowing teams to draw a cross on an opposing team’s game board each time they win a card, or only permitting a win if every transformation type (reflect, rotate and translate) appears at least once in the team’s three sets of instructions.
2. If you can’t use whiteboard markers, try using manipulatives such as pattern blocks instead.