Friday 28 November 2008

Want to play a game?

Why not..
The children in my 6-9 class love to play games together and so I try as much as I can to create games that are in line with the curriculum, giving them the chance to practice, extend their learning and learn from each other. Here the boys are playing the addition game with two dice.
Basically its a box with two dice. The children take turns rolling the dice and then they add up the numbers and write the question on the squared paper. The paper is just long enough to keep them engaged for long enough that they actually practice their mental addition. In case you didn't know most children develop their own unique way of doing mental addition, so this game has given them a great opportunity to share how they work out the total of two numbers. The other day I walked into the class to find 6 children playing this at one time, all at different levels. It was so cute to see them come together and support each other.

This game can also be used to do subtraction and multiplications.
You can use 2 dice, one green for units and one blue for tens to do sums with 2 digit numbers. The colouring matched with the colouring for the Large Number cards used with the golden beads.

1 comment:

Gigi said...

I also find that when teaching Spanish, the most popular activity is games. It is such a fun way for them to learn new vocabulary. And you are right, it is amazing how much they support each other.