During my placement in a grade 7 class, I wanted to make learning the Probability strand in math more engaging. I had the students, while learning about probability, create their own probability games at the end of the unit. This was a project they worked in groups with. We had a math block of just playing probability games.
The students came up with very creative games that the rest of the class could play. Many games consisted of students throwing an object into various-sized containers/buckets. One group had 3 different sized buckets and had the rest of the class make a hypothesis of the probability of getting the balls into each bucket. They had prizes for people who guessed an accurate probability answer and then had them test their hypothesis.
Another group made a Roulette game. They incorporated more colours than the traditional black and red and also had numbers. They made their table out of cardboard, plastic lids, and paperclips.
The students loved creating their own games and playing the games of other groups. They understood the concept of probability much better. Although this took up 3 blocks of math, the students had fun and learned at the same time. I had full participation, even from students who normally would not participate in anything.
Jeffrey,
ReplyDeleteAs we already mentioned many times in the course, probability games are often very engaging for students in the classroom. The grade 6/7 class at my school last year did something very similar, although they incorporated the kindergarten classes. They held somewhat of a probability-based games event in the gym, where the kindergarten kids were to come and play the games. The grade 6 and 7 students had to create a probability game and record the results obtained by the kindergarten students in order to obtain their experimental probability results. It was a mini-project, but very engaging for them. The games also varied from as simple as pulling a marble or a coloured block from a bag to more complicated probability games. This was both beneficial to the learning of the grade 6/7s and the kindergarten classes, not to mention "getting up and moving" since they were no longer in a structured classroom setting.
Carline,
DeleteI like that idea of using the kindergartens as an experiment to their probability projects. It takes the project a step further which I will have to try for the future.