Math mazes are a great way to engage students. They’ve become my go-to strategy for starting math class and getting students engaged in independent practice. Students are working on math but it doesn’t look like a classic worksheet. Instead, it looks like a game or puzzle and many students will let down their defenses and work on math in a fun way. They work great as a warm-up, a review, or as independent practice. (We’ve talked at length about how awesome math mazes are here and here.) But how can you use them in distance learning?
With the sudden shift to online learning, we wanted to take our math maze love into the digital world. So now there are two ways to use all the math mazes we create. You can use them on paper or you can assign them digitally.
In this post we’ll dive into how to use math mazes digitally. We’ve recreated all of our math mazes in Google Slides and added them to the paper versions already available on TPT. These mazes practice a range of middle school math topics (click here to see all topics). So, if you’ve already downloaded a maze previously, when you download an updated version you’ll see a new page with links to the digital mazes, digital answer keys, and a digital teacher’s guide.
What’s different with digital mazes?
Here’s what’s different about digital mazes- students can show their progress through the maze with draggable arrows! They mark their path by choosing a pre-populated arrow and dragging it to the maze. Let me show you:
On the side of the slide are arrows for students to choose from. When they click and drag, it will overlay their path while still showing the answer beneath it:
*Special note- the arrows won’t line up perfectly. If this really bothers a student, they can adjust it by clicking on the blue squares around the shape. But honestly I wouldn’t encourage students to spend their time doing that- the math is much more important than perfectly lined-up arrows.
Want to try out a free math maze today? Sign up for the Maze of the Month club and get a free maze on middle school math concepts sent right to your inbox each month. Each maze has 2 versions- a printable & a digital version built in Google Slides (perfect for whatever your classroom looks like!) Plus, you’ll get an adding and subtracting integers maze right away.
YES! Sign me up for the Maze of the Month Club!
How to get started with digital mazes
The first step after clicking on the link is to make your own copy. This will be automatically prompted and will give you the ability to make this an assignment and adjust the slides as you want.
Prompt to make a Copy:
Assigning one maze at a time
Once you make a copy you can customize the maze for your situation. For example, you can assign all three mazes to students or you can assign one at a time. If you want to break the set mazes into individual mazes then, you will need to do the following (CLICK HERE for a video walk through of this process):
- Select the slides you want in the new document by clicking on them on the side bar. The selected slides will be highlighted in light orange like you can see in the picture below.
- Click on the file button on the top and then click on “Make a Copy” and choose “Selected Slides”. You’ll probably want to include the directions slide unless your students have already done a lot of mazes online. Then, choose the slide of the day that you want to include as well.
- Rename the presentation to something that makes sense for you and press “OK”.
- You now have a copy of just that one maze. You can repeat this process with the second maze and then again with the third maze.
How to assign a maze in Google Classroom
Since these mazes are in Google Slides, they’re easy to assign in Google Classroom. If you’re not sure how to assign a task created in Google Slides to Google Classroom, then I’ve created a video for you. The video refers to a slightly different digital activity, but the steps and the process is the same.
You can assign Google tasks like this in other LMS platforms, but may lose some functionalities. For example, it’s possible that when you upload the slide show it’s treated as a PDF and you lose the drag and drop arrows. In that case, you’ll need to enable a way for students to draw directly on the digital slide/pdf to show their path.
What about student work?
As math teachers we like to see student work so that we can see what students are doing right and wrong. It’s difficult for students to show work on the computer screen, so a solution to this problem is you can ask students to take a picture of their work and add that photo to a new slide after the slide with the completed maze.
Another way for students to show their work is to record a short video. For example, you could also assign a FlipGrid question where students explain their thinking on one specific question from the maze. (If you set it to “moderation required”, then student responses aren’t published to the rest of the class unless/until you want them to be).
Giving Feedback to Students
In the digital world, feedback looks different too. But, we know it’s important for students to get feedback on their learning. When using mazes in-person, I would circulate the classroom and quickly scan the paths students were on. Then, I would know who was struggling and give feedback to support them. Or, I would have students bring their mazes to me to get checked off and stamp their completed mazes.
With mazes being completed digitally and possibly outside of the classroom, feedback looks a little different. So, I created these virtual stickers for giving feedback to students. They can be easily copied and pasted into students’ work to show them where they need to try again, and what they’re doing well on.
You can click here to get your own copy of these virtual stickers.
If you won’t be able to give students feedback in a timely manner then you can always add the maze answer key to the student document before you assign it. Or you can post it separately for your students and have them review their work.
Final thoughts on digital mazes
Having both a digital AND paper-based version of mazes helps you use these engaging practice pages in a variety of ways. Not only can it be used for distance learning, it can also be a great option in a hybrid model where some students are working online while others are in person. It could even make a great option for absent work, allowing students an online option for an in-class assignment.
Want to try one out today? Check out these topics on TPT. If you’ve already purchased one before, go ahead and download the updated copy to get the digital version too.
If you haven’t used mazes before, be sure to sign up for the FREE Maze of the Month club and get a maze sent right to your inbox each month.
Thanks so much for reading! Until next time!
