Written and Algebraic Expressions

Pinterest may be a time suck, but it has really inspired me to try different approaches in my classroom, especially with regard to interactive notebooks and hands-on activities.  (Sidenote: Interactive notebooks seem like regular notebooks only the notes are glued in, possibly in the form of foldables, rather than written.  Am I the only one who thinks this?) This week my 6th graders were working on translating written expressions into algebraic expressions.  I remember doing this lesson last year and it was a huge struggle that required A LOT of review as we got closer to the state assessment.  I wanted to avoid catch-up review and attempt to make this concept more concrete in my students' minds.  I've seen different lessons presented as scavenger hunts and decided that this concept might work well in that format.  
I created two sets of notecards, one blue, one orange.  On each notecard I wrote a "clue."  The clues were either written or algebraic expressions.  In the bottom right hand corner of each clue I placed a letter.  If the scavenger hunt was completed successfully, the letters would spell out "welcome back."  This created an incentive for kids who wanted to find the secret message, as well as a way for me to quickly check whether they had matched the correct "clue" with the work on their sheet.  My thought behind the blue and orange clues (each path was identical) was that I didn't want all of the students bunched up around the same 11 clues.  Two colors allowed a class of 25 to spread out amongst 22 clues. 

The students really seemed to love it, but there were a couple of glitches.  In the class with students who are more comfortable with Math, one student figured the answer out quickly, blurted out the secret message, and then everyone just tried to find the notecards with the letter that came next.  This completely took away from trying to dissect the expression.  My other class, who overall struggles more with Math, started off strong.  They were VERY into it and didn't try to find a way around the activity.  A couple of students, however, were not on task and quickly turned a movement activity into play time.  

I will definitely re-use this activity but some changes might be: Do the scavenger hunt in two waves--one group working independently while another group moves around the room.  I might also make varying versions of the scavenger hunt and color code them by difficulty. 
I also need to keep in mind that students will not get better at hands-on or movement activities unless they are given opportunities to practice.