Students are to fold the paper in half and crease it. They should unfold the paper and lay it on their desk. This will be their building mat for this activity. The crease down the paper is the equals in the equation.
Students are then to assign the two colors either as positive or negative.
The teacher then puts an equation on the overhead as the students are to represent this equation on their mat with the colored cubes. This activity teachers students concrete examples to the abstractness of algebra. Once the students are familiar with this, then turn it around and have the students to make an equation on their mat for you to find out what it is.