Map-Making Activity - Parallel Lines!

My students are taking many days' worth of standardized tests this week - ugh. They take the tests in the morning, and then still have their afternoon classes. Because of our rotating schedule, I get to see some of my seventh-graders even though they spent all morning doing grueling math and ELA tests. Since we're approaching the beginning of the end of the year (it's almost April! How??) we are making sure we get the most out of every single instructional day that we have. 

This was the activity I came up with to introduce our parallel lines lessons, but still, have a little fun and destress after exams. Students were tasked to make a map of the neighborhood that our school is in by following the steps on a worksheet. Then, they drew the roads on the map that connected memorable landmarks that also happened to be parallel to each other ;). From their map, they drew the conclusion that parallel lines have the same slope on the coordinate plane. 

This activity could easily be extended as practice for writing line equations, and then onto perpendicular equations as well. I thought it would be challenging to get the students ready for a math activity after their long testing sessions that morning, but since it was such an approachable activity they were pretty enthusiastic about it. Were I to do this again on a non-testing day, I'd probably have them take notes and get ready to learn about perpendicular lines the next day but with the chance to do a little drawing the students are happy and I get some nice free room decorations!

Lesson Materials (These are pretty specific to my neighborhood, but there are editable versions if you wanted to make your own starter map!)