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In the September 2021 issue, I described how the card game Timeline could be adapted for the MTH1W course, and how my students were playing the game co-operatively and competitively, both in person and online. With Timeline, my students were excited to play a game that some knew from outside of math class. Playing games can be motivating pedagogically, especially for middle school students, by safely developing social and emotional learning strategies within the structure of the game rules. While teaching online, I discovered Desmos Teacher-mode activities, like Marbleslides and Polygraphs Collection, that facilitate students working together online in game-based fashion. Colleagues have shown me other game options using Google Slides and Minecraft platforms to create escape rooms and puzzle-building competitions. This reminded me of how effective game play could be for engagement and skill reinforcement.
The basic mechanics of many classic board and card games can be used to explore concepts in graph theory and probability, like Settlers of Catan, Set, and Ticket to Ride. Other traditional games, like War, Dominoes, and Pyramid, use counting techniques as ways to improve on a winning approach. For War, in June 2010, our Editor, Tim Sibbald, provided details of how the design is mathematically linked to game characteristics like length (see Gazette, 48(4), pp. 30-31, in the archives). The connection between mathematics and games, however, is not always obvious to middle school students.
Inspired by the success of games during online learning, I was keen to revisit game playing in the face-to-face classroom this year. This column provides some suggestions for easy adaptations of board and card games. These may be new to you or your students, or perhaps new in the context of learning math. Although some games directly require mathematical formulas or practice of mechanical skills (e.g., Math Dice), my goal here is largely to present games that students might be surprised to play in math class. Most of these do not directly require mathematical expertise and are middle school classroom-friendly adaptations of publicly available games or game mechanics. These adaptations do not require you to purchase the commercially available game, but I do include each game's web link in case you are interested. Many game publishers also include learning resources, starter activities for a...