Molar Mass Round Robin Activity

Round Robin Description: I have found this to be a universally high-engagement activity where students work together to solve Formula Mass problems. There are 4 problems per sheet and 4 different sheets. Students are given a fixed amount of time (3-4 min., the website online-stopwatch.com has easy to use interval timers) to solve a problem. They then pass their paper to the left and receive a new paper from the right. They put their initials in the “Solver’s Initials” blank and are given another fixed time to solve problem #2 on the new paper. Repeat for problems #3 and #4. When completed, the paper should have 4 different problem solvers. The paper gets passed back to the original solver who checks all the work on the paper. Give time for discussion of answers and encourage peer-to-peer collaboration to ensure all students understand all problems.
All problems are different, but the type of problems on each sheet are the same. This means you can give general advice about solving a problem (e.g. “In problem 4 the subscript distributes to all elements in the parentheses!”) and all students will benefit, regardless of the sheet they are working on at the time.
Key words: Formula Mass, Molar Mass, Element, Compound, Mixture