Math Based Game Faires.

 One year, I had my students create their own board games.  The idea was for them to choose a topic and create a board game complete with pieces and rules so younger students could play the games and learn something.

The hardest thing was to get students past trying to use the board games they were familiar with but without changing them.  With encouragement, they eventually began modifying some of the games to work with a topic such as adding or subtracting fractions, finding area, or other such topic.

Some of the areas students struggles with included creating a set of rules that made sense and explained everything the players needed to know.  I often read the rules and asked questions so students could revise them until one could play the game.  Once students decided they'd finished their game, I had another group of students try to play it, evaluate the weak spots while finding some good things about it.

Eventually, the students all had a playable game with rules that made sense and anyone could play.  Once they were ready, I made arrangements with several elementary teachers to have my students come in with their games for children to play.  I explained to my students that this is the Beta testing part of the processes to make sure the younger ones could play the games as designed.

The elementary students were asked to provide feedback.  If they were old enough, they provided it in written form and if they were younger, the teacher recorded their comments and students listened to their suggestions.  This often lead to revisions and when the games were as finished as possible, we invited parents in one night to play the student created games.  This event turned out to be quite popular with families.

Another year, I taught one class of high school students who'd missed so much school they were well below where they needed to be.  I happened across a huge book of math games for grades 1 to 5.  I had the students break up into groups of two and they had to look through the book to find a game they thought elementary kids would enjoy.

They had to make sure they had everything they needed for students to play the game.  They had to make sure they themselves understood all the rules and had to be able to explain the rules to the children.  I made them play their games several times through so they'd be ready.  I invited all the classes in grades 1 to 5 to the school library to try out the Math game faire.

It was successful.  The kids loved it and hated to go back to their classrooms.  Even the principal dropped by and joined in along with many of the paras and many hated to leave.  It was great because the older 4th and 5th grade students didn't mind trying some of the games geared for younger students.  They had fun.

Now, I admit, I don't know how successful this would be in today's world with all the mobile devices but I would still give it a try because most modern device based games have lost the human touch.  In another column, I'll talk about creating math based board games in more detail.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.