DIY Dry Erase Mastery Mats

In recent years, I have begun creating mastery mats and math mats for students to work on tasks with a partner. These include instances where I want my students to get some repetitive practice of content. The combination of task cards and a mastery mat has been beneficial to my students. What’s more, it is a structure we can use repeatedly during a unit. Perhaps we only do two task cards in class today, and next class we add another two task cards. You get the idea. I read recently that students are more likely to do better if they have smaller chunks of practice on multiple days as opposed to numerous practice in only one day. And of course that makes sense! Small, repetitive practice can better get the content or process into long term memory. In this post, I will talk about two methods I have for creating dry-erase mastery mats for both mathematical content and more conceptual content.

Large-Scale DIY Dry Erase Mastery Mats

The first time I pulled out my large-scale mastery mats, students were shocked! I’m not sure they had ever seen anything like it. It was different, and so I had buy in immediately. This method will cost a little money, but there are ways to reduce the cost. Here are the steps I took to create my large-format dry erase mastery mats:

1. Get some foam board. To reduce costs, get some from the dollar store. Well, the $1.25 store. But still, it is a much cheaper option. Mine have held up quite well for a few years now.

2. Obtain dry erase sticker rolls. I purchased these rolls from Amazon, but any roll will do. This is the most expensive part, and is more expensive with the number of boards you wish to create. I think I got 3 boards per roll, and I wanted 12 so I could have students work in pairs. Keep an eye out around Black Friday or Amazon prime day, and you may be able to find these rolls cheaper.

3. Cut the roll to the desired length. Foam boards from the dollar store are about 20x30”, so I cut to a length of about 28” to keep a border around the exterior of the white board surface.

4. Apply the cut sticker paper to the foam board. TIP: only take the backing off a few inches at a time and leave the remainder of the roll intact. As you progress in pressing down the sticker paper on the foam board, remove the backing paper as you go. It is far easier to apply using this method than taking the entire backing off and placing it down in one go. If you attempt in one go, you will end up with crooked sticker paper and lots of bubbles.

5. After laying down the sticker paper, if you have big bubbles, you can try and smooth them out to the edge using a scraper of some sort. For those stubborn bubbles you cannot get rid of, take a safety pin or something similar and pop a small whole in the bubble. Then smooth down the sticker around that area.

6. Use a sharpie to write on the dry erase sticker to layout your mat. I definitely recommend planning this out on scratch paper first.

7. The sharpie will come off if students use dry erase marker on top of the sharpie and later erase. I just ask my students to avoid writing on top of the sharpie with the dry erase markers, and they do a decent job with that. Every once in a while, you might have to re-trace over the sharpie.

And that’s it. That’s how you can make your own mastery mats in large-scale format. I’ll admit, if I had more time and resources, I’d probably cut vinyl on my Cricut to put on the mat instead of sharpie. But I’ve used the same mats for a few years now and they’ve held up remarkably well.

Ledger-Sized (A3) Dry Erase Mastery Mats

Dry Erase Mastery Mats in A3

I obviously can’t make large-scale dry erase mastery mats all the time. It’s time consuming and would get expensive. So I’ve improvised a smaller version that can double as a dry-erase surface. Here’s how:

1. Use Google Slides or PowerPoint to open up a slide show. Resize the slide to be 11x17 (A3 Ledger size).

2. Design your mat using text boxes, word art, shapes and symbols. You can make these one-sided or two-sided. If making one-sided, you only need one side. If making two-sided, create two slides.

3. Once you are happy with the result, download the file as a pdf.

4. Print the pdf. In color or black and white, your choice. I send mine to our print shop for the district. They can print in color (for a fee) on 11x17 cardstock. I’d recommend cardstock if possible.

5. Get the mats laminated. Once laminated, you now have a dry erase surface. It might not erase as well as a normal dry-erase surface, but it works pretty well. I occasionally wipe them down with a disinfectant wipe and that takes a lot of the remaining dry erase off of the surface.

And there you have it. I will admit, I have made more of these recently, as they are more cost effective and take less time. And these have worked well with my students.

If you don’t have time to make your own, check out the mats I have available for purchase from TPT.

Thanks so much for reading! Have you ever used mastery mats in high school chemistry before? Let me know over on Instagram. Feel free to let me know if you have any ideas for mats you’d like to see in the store. Happy teaching!

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