Number games are popular
Number games are popular in American elementary schools. Sometimes the games reinforce concepts, but not always. A typical current-day classroom scene is described by Linda Ruiz Davenport et al.: “In one third-grade classroom, students are sitting with partners in various parts of the room, playing number games. I know that such games are often considered a way to build number fact fluency, so I join a pair of students to see what they are doing and what number facts they are learning. One student rolls two number dice and gets a “3” and a “4,” meaning he can move his piece 7 spaces along the path to the rocket ship. I hope to see this student add the 3 and the 4 to get 7 and then move his piece 7 spaces, but that is not what happens. Instead, he moves his piece 3 spaces and then 4 more. What is this student having an opportunity to practice with this number game?” (Davenport et al., 2019, p. 10) The games here are not this type of game.
Concept-focused games motivate students to adopt new ways of thinking
The games here are concept-focused (CF) games. In a CF game, students must focus on a specific concept in order to play and win. For example, the addition game “Change 3+4 into 3+3+1” motivates students to focus on how the problem 3+4 = ? can be solved by relating it to two facts they already know: 3+3 = 6 and 6+1 = 7.
In contrast, the rocket ship game described by Davenport et al. above is an answer-generating (AG) game. AG games are designed to motivate students to generate answers.
The problem with AG games is that students receive rewards (i.e. playtime and, sometimes, the experience of winning) for generating answers in ways that do not necessarily involve learning. CF games solve the problem by focusing attention specifically on a particular concept.
This is the point being made by Jennifer Bay-Williams and Gina Kling when they say “[G]ames support strategy development only when the use of reasoning strategies is explicitly built into the games and reinforced through student-teacher and student-student interactions. When this happens, students’ reasoning strategies develop along with their motivation, interest, and desire to be challenged.” (Bay-Williams and Kling, 2014) These authors provide a number of CF games in their book Math Fact Fluency: 60+ Games and Assessment Tools to Support Learning and Retention. (Bay-Williams and Kling, 2019)
Kitty Rutherford describes even more ways in which AG games may not serve learners: “Sometimes teachers use games solely to practice number facts. These games usually do not engage children for long because they are based on students’ recall or memorization of facts. Some students are quick to memorize; others need a few moments to compute a related fact. When students are placed in situations in which recall speed determines success, they may infer that being “smart” in mathematics means getting the correct answer quickly instead of valuing the process of thinking. Consequently, students may feel incompetent when they use number patterns or related facts to arrive at a solution and may begin to dislike mathematics because they are not fast enough.” (Rutherford, 2015) These words come from her freely downloadable PDF Building Conceptual Understanding and Fluency Through Games, Grade 3.
Use the games to introduce new concepts
You can use the CF games in this program to introduce and teach mathematical concepts. These games are designed to be accessible for learners who are new to the concepts. If you like having access to a pre-written teaching script, you can use the content provided in the rules.
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References
Bay-Williams, Jennifer, and Gina Kling. 2014. “Enriching Addition and Subtraction Fact Mastery Through Games.” Teaching Children Mathematics 21(4): 238-247.
Bay-Williams, Jennifer, and Gina Kling, 2019. Math Fact Fluency: 60+ Games and Assessment Tools to Support Learning and Retention. Reston, VA: ASCD and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Davenport, Linda Ruiz, Connie S. Henry, Douglas H. Clements, and Julie Sarama. 2019. No More Math Fact Frenzy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Rutherford, Kitty. 2015. “Building Conceptual Understanding
and Fluency Through Games.” The North Carolina Standard Course of Study in Mathematics. Retrieved from https://tools4ncteachers.com/resources/district-leaders/documents/3rdgrade-GAMES.pdf.
September 9, 2020