Games developed by the Middle School group:

Integer Pictionary:

This game was developed around being the hook of a lesson.  It is an activity where students will simply take turn drawing pictures that apply to integer situations.  The situations the group created were: an airplane flying, top 100 music chart, a scuba diver, a syscraper, getting an F on an assignment, a person climbing a mountain, a scale, a person golfing, a person parachuting, a flag pole, a diving board, a submarine, a person skiing, a football field, cold weather, and an elevator.

Fraction War

Using Phase 10 cards, draw two at a time.  Make fractions with the smaller number on top and the larger number on the bottom.  Compare the size of the fractions, and whoever has the biggest fractions wins all of the cards.  The winner is whoever gets all of the cards.  There are many extensions that we came up with including: draw three cards and use two to create a proper fraction before you reveal, so the students have some choice; "Closest to 1/2" (or 1/4, 2/3, 3/4, or some other faction), where the winner is not the one with the biggest fraction but the one with the fraction closest to 1/2; This can get particularly interesting if students are able to look at more than just 2-3 cards at a time, so they have more strategy and choice; "Mixed number war" or "Improper Fraction War" where students draw more cards and compare different types of fractions.

Distributive Property Target Number

Students are given sets of numbers and a target number, but the numbers are chosen to always contain a target and group of number that can be found using the distributive property.  (Can someone from that group give a little more information and examples here?)

Construct It

Each player needs a piece of paper, a straight edge, and a writing utensil.  There are two piles of cards: one describing sides of a geometric shape and one describing angles.  Flip one card from each pile and they might say "A figure with at least 4 sides" and "exactly 2 obtuse angles."  Each player then uses their paper, pencil, and straight edge to draw the given shape.  If they successfully complete the shape, they receive one point.  Sometimes impossible shapes will com up: "An isosceles triangle" and "Two Obtuse Angles." If this happens, the players must draw and explain why this is impossible to earn a point.  Possible extensions include more specific criteria (a 30 degree angle) or different terminology (similarity and congruence).

Ratio Fill Up

Objective: To earn three points by filling ratio tables with congruent ratios.

Materials: Gameboard with 4 ratios tables with room for 5 ratios in each table,  ratio cards, point counters, calculator.

Set-up: Shuffle ratio cards and deal 5 to each player.

Game player: The first player plays any ratio card from their hand in the blank first space in a ratio table and then draws a card to end his/her turn.  The second player can either play an equivalent ratio in the same table as the first player or play a different ratio in one of the empty tables.  Play continues with each player playing equivalent ratios to fill up the ratio tables and drawing cards to replace the ratios just played.  When a ratio table gets full, whoever played the last ratio into that table gets 1 point, as long as they can identify operations to get from the first ratio played to the last (ie, if the first ratio is 2/8 and the last is 4/16, they could say multiply by 2/2 or divide by 2/2 and multiply by 4/4).  The player to the right of the player that played the last ratio will take the calculator and divide out the ratios in order to check to make sure the ratios are all equivalent.  Cards from the completed ratio table are put into the discard pile, and the cleared ratio table is open for any player to play in.  The first player to 3 points is the winner.

Other rules: If the draw pile ever runs out, reshuffle the discard pile to create a new draw pile.  If a card is played incorrectly the player that noticed the error draws an extra card and the incorrect card is put into the discard pile.  Skips, reverses and wilds: Skips automatically skip the next player, reverses switch which order the players play (so, if play is going left at first, it instead goes right), and wilds can be played in any ratio table that already has a ratio in it, but the player who plays it must name an equivalent ratio that isn't already in the table.  If none of the cards from a player's hand can be played on their turn, that player discards one card and draws one card and their turn ends.