One of the most powerful lessons that's emerging out of my current Masters project on multiplicative thinking is on the power of maths card games in the classroom.

The power of games jumped out to me for two particular reasons; one relating to spacing repetition, and the other relating to formative assessment.

It's perhaps not surprising that playing games has proved a fun and engaging way to incorporate spaced repetition of traditionally laborious number facts (like doubles of the numbers to 10, complements of 10, and doubling strategies) into sessions with students. But what definitely came as a surprise to me was the notion of using student boredom as a formative assessment tool.

Students would come in at the start of our sessions and ask me, session after session ‘Sir, can we play double trouble bingo* again?'. I was shocked by how many times the students were authentically excited to play the same game. It took me a while to realise that what was happening was that they were still challenged by the maths on which the game was based, and as a result, were still keen to play. With all of the games there came a day when the students would suddenly say ‘this is boring'. Why such an abrupt change?

Original Image Source: Pixbay
Original Image Source: Pixbay

The answer came when I serendipitously had a campfire-side chat with an early childhood educator and, whilst discussing learning through play, she spoke of the analogous situation in her learning space. “Yeah”, she said, “They'll play with a toy and they'll struggle with it, then they'll solve it. They might solve it a few times, but then they'll leave and go to another toy. That's when we know they're ready for us to make it a bit harder”… BINGO! What a revelation!!! (Well, for me anyway). Turns out we can trust students to know when they're ready for the next challenge. #studentvoice!

As my masters project wraps up, and I think of taking some of the techniques and strategies out of the small group setting and into the classroom, I'm trying to brainstorm ways to bring the power of these games into the mix.

What I've shared below is the three games that I'll be trialling with my VCAL numeracy class tomorrow. I've created a quick worksheet as a warm up to each of the games (and as an aid to help the students select the right game for them) and I've bought a bunch of packs of cards to get us started. The idea of the videos is not only to share with other teachers some of these games but also as a (non literacy-dependent) reference for students to check if they're a bit hazy on the rules. I've got a whole heap of other games that also powerfully support multiplicative thinking and I hope to eventually compile them all into a nice concise resource. But for now, here's a taste whilst I experiment with what actually works at the chalkface.

Big thanks to my buddy Holly for helping me with the vids!!! 

A note on modelling and mathematical language: Holly and I have tried to model the kind of mathematical thinking (and talking) that we hope to promote in students. In addition to explaining our thinking out loud, doing our own calculations and keeping our own scores is a really important part of the game play to ensure that everyone learns as much as possible through playing.

Click here for the auto-generating worksheets that complement these games. 

*I'll upload my ‘double trouble bingo' slideshows soon.

Complements of 10 memory

Quickly recognising the complements of 10 (2 and 8, 7 and 3, 6 and 4, etc) is an imperative skill for students addition and subtraction abilities and is a key  element of part-part-whole understanding (students recognising that numbers are made up of other numbers!). I developed this game by making a simple change to the age old ‘memory' game that I used to play with cards as a kid. (ps: Another game to easily be modified to work with complements of 10 is the game of ‘snap'. Depends on how much you value your cards though as this game will definitely reduce their longevity).

Stop or Dare

This game builds on part-part-whole understanding and place value understanding (e.g., to add a 10 we just increase the number in the 10s column by 1) to help build students' addition strategies. I can't claim this game, I came across it through the people behind MrMooreMaths on youtube. This was one of the students' faves and, as I mention in the video, it can be made more complex by subtracting or adding, or even adding or subtracting doubles to or from 200 (could do triples or quadruples too, the possibilities are endless).

Picking Percentages

Holly and I designed this one together a couple of days ago. I feel it's a really powerful way to help students to link fractions to percentages and develop some proportional thinking (the fact that the percentage changes as the number of the cards in the round changes has the potential to be a real mind bender!). It's only been played by 2 people in the world so far so I feel it's got some tweaking to go. In particular I want to change the scoring system to more of a progressive adding one, this will help build the tension in the game. I'll try it out in the classroom and we'll see how we go. Again, this game could be made more complex by introducing more rounds such as 6, 8, 9 and 20 card rounds.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve these games, or any suggestions on other games I'd love for you to hit me up on twitter. @ollie_lovell : )

What others are playing. Some nuggets from twitter…

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