I don’t know about you, but I am always looking for new games to engage my students and practice various skills. Several months ago, I had a last minute schedule change and needed a random little time filler. My best ideas come to me when I am not planning ahead and am flying by the seat of my pants. Anyone else feel the same? Well, on this random day, I made up a game that my kids LOVED! Earlier this week, one of my kids asked why we hadn’t played that game in a while. To be honest, I had really forgotten about it. So, I whipped up something a little more formal to practice our current skill of solving multiplication and division equations.
So here’s how this game works. I divide my students up into teams. I usually do four groups of five because I have twenty students; however, you could use whatever number works best for your classroom. One person from each team comes up to stand facing the board. I display a problem for them to solve. Now let me tell ya, the first time I did this activity, I didn’t have a pretty PowerPoint to display. I used my Educreations app and my Apple TV to make up and display my own problems on the fly. This time, I was a little more prepared!
Each team has one person representing them on the carpet. They stand facing the board while they answer the question that I give. After they have an answer, they turn around and wait for the other players to finish up. Each person who solves the problem correctly earns one point. Then, another team member comes to the carpet and is given another question. And so on. We repeat throughout multiple rounds until we run out of questions or time, whichever comes first!
Here is what I LOVE about this game. All of the students MUST complete each problem at their seat. Randomly, problems will be selected for additional team points. Meaning that if every team member has that problem correct, I add a point to their score. If even one team member doesn’t have the problem correct or isn’t working along with the group, they miss the opportunity for an additional point. This creates a purpose for working with the group and following along. These additional team points are typically the difference between the winning team and loosing team.
After the game is completed, I put up a few problems for the students to complete independently. Depending on the skill and the level of responses I am getting from my students, I often take a grade on a few short problems. If it is a difficult skill or something that I am still planning to work on, I may use these four questions to guide groupings on the following day or discussions and mini lessons that we have later in the day.
If you’re interested in this game for your classroom, click the image below to grab the freebie! 🙂
This sounds like so much fun! I am going to try this out on my second graders as a review before we take our next math test. Thanks for the great idea!