Math Activities And Games Part 3

Here we are on day 3 with games, activities, and other interactive things you can use in your classroom.  I do double check these to make sure they haven't been sold to someone else or all the sudden cost a ton of money because things change all the time.  Years ago, I used a website that allowed me to take the steps needed to solve an equation, mix up the steps, and have the students rearrange them into the correct order. Sort of the mathematical version of sentence strips.  

Today we are starting with the site Purpose Games. This site allows the teacher to set up groups (one class per group) and arrange tournaments (or assignments)  for students to participate in. Tournaments can be used monthly, weekly, or daily as needed. In addition, it allows for google sign-ins so if your school uses google e-mail, all your students will be able to use it. The site has some great instructions for teachers to set groups and tournaments up and use in the classroom. This site is completely free to use.

I checked out some of the games that have been created by other teachers.  When I put math in the search bar, games covering topics such as 3-D geometric shapes, basic trig identities, radians, unit circle, polar coordinates, percentages, etc came up.  I tried a more specific topic to see if that gave decent results. When I typed in coordinate plane, I ended up with multiple games popping up and one even included vocabulary. I tried the word solve and got a lovely variety of games covering solving multistep equations, solving by substitution, solving for sin(x) and cos(x)

I chose a short game on solving inequalities.  It had 5 questions and all the problems when solved were greater than.  There were no negative numbers involved but at the end, but at the end, a scoreboard arrives at the end letting the player know how well they did.  The only thing is that if a question is missed, there is no feedback to tell you which questions you missed or why. 

I took a screen shot so you can see.  It gives some cool stats and if the student didn't do well and wants to up their score, they can play it again.  Students automatically earn badges as they play games so that is cool and there is a leaderboard but I'm not sure if the leaderboard can be customized for your class. It does give your ranking overall every time you play.  I would also check out the games to make sure they aren't too long and cover the material you want.  If not, they have the ability to let you create games yourself.

Give the site a look to see if it is something you can use.  Next we have Room Recess which is actually geared for K to 6 but several games available and can be used on a computer or touchscreen.  What sets this apart from other sites is that each game comes with a video, a worksheet, the game, and a quiz.  I've included this site so if you have students who have difficulty working with fractions, or multiplying, you can assign students games from here to help them strengthen their foundation.  I know there are some middle school teachers who read this and may want to use it in their classrooms as scaffolding. One nice feature is that you can click on the grade and click on math to find the games that work for say grades 4 to 6.  

Another site with games is Shepard Software.  This site has lots of games that do not require students to sign in. Once you have the webpage up, you click on math and they list a variety of topics from early math, all the way up to Algebra.  Along the top, they also tell you they have been redoing the games so they work on digital devices.  I decided to check out Geometry and several games popped up that were geometry based. The triangles and angles one looked interesting so I clicked on it. They have 5 different levels beginning with the basic three angles themselves.  The next four levels dealt with basic triangles of right, acute, and obtuse with a variation including rotation and then the special triangles like equilateral and a variation with rotation. The games tells you how many questions and gives a choice of relaxed mode or timed so students who are slower can still play it without pressure.  The game I chose had moving triangles and I was told to find an acute, so I took the round circle, clicked on the acute angle triangle and it moved to the next type of triangle.  At the end, you got a report of hits and misses and percent overall.  It also listed the choice of redoing the game.  This is worth checking out.  It may not have a lot of games but the games I tried weren't bad and offers students some very specific topics.  Check it out.

I'll be back Wednesday with the last installment of this topic.  I hope these are helping by providing some sites you didn't know about.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.