Monday, June 10, 2013

Probability Games

I was having a dinner party on the weekend, and we ended up playing a dice game after dinner was finished. Everyone was having a great time, and another teacher friend of mine piped up and said, "Oh my God, Laurie - thank you so much, you just planned my next few lessons for me to finish up this unit on probability! Perfect!"  We got to talking about activities that you could use for probability to make it engaging for students, while still allowing to learn what we need them to learn.  Now of course, I'm not exactly sure how she will introduce this game to the students, what activities they will do to connect to the actual 'math,' etc., but while thinking about it, I also realized that there are many ways a game like this could be used!
I'm not sure if anyone has heard of it - but it doesn't exactly have an appropriate name.!! Anyhow, the kids could separate just 'playing' and enjoying, with calculating the probabilities of getting different roles.
 We are probably often being 'stared-in-the-face,' with lots of great games, scenarios that we could use with our students that would make our lessons engaging/interesting while learning, and while putting the learning in a real-life context for them (some things that come to mind for probability, for example, are games like Yahtzee, card games - BlackJack, and a roulette wheel!).  Anything that we take notice of that we can use, can be beneficial, especially when we are talking about DI and the need to reach students in different ways. We just need to keep our eyes and ears open to see when this great opportunities are right in front of us!

1 comment:

  1. I think card games, or a game with dice is a great way of exploring probability. As teachers we should always disguise the student's classwork as a game or a fun activity. This post was extremely helpful and now I know what games to use when teaching probability (BlackJack, Yahtzee). Thanks Laurie, your post really helped! :)

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