Today at the Bronx School, I was fortunate to have some time with Dr. Paula Hajar, the Professional Development Specialist for Math.  We discussed the importance of games to keep the students engaged.  I stressed that with tutoring, I felt the students need to be having fun to keep them wanting to come.  She asked me about the games I had used and then introduced me to two new types of games in which many variations are possible.

The first one, a game with dice, has the student building a staircase with rods and then rolling the dice to determine which rods they can take away from their staircase.  If you are working with just addition and subtraction for example, and you roll a 5 and a 3, you could take away a yellow and a light green rod, or a brown rod for (5+3), or a red rod (for 5-3) , assuming you still have the given rods still in your staircase.  The next player then rolls the dice and takes away a rod or rods according to the numbers or an addition/subtraction operation on the numbers.  Play continues until one player has no rods left.  Another way to play the game would be to allow multiplcatin or division on the dice numbers as well,  or to add another die and use three numbers in any expression with +,-, x, or ÷.  Many other variations on this game can be made.

Another game involves a 5 x 5 table of numbers.  The numbers result of an operation or operations on, for example, four numbers such as 7, 6, 9, and 3.  The table can be prepared ahead of time.  Any and all correct equations using the numbers and the four operators  +,-, x, or ÷ could be used.  Examples are 7+6+9+3=25, (3×6) + (9-7)=20, (3×6) x (9-7) = 36 and so on.  With the twenty-five numbers arranged on the table, students must then find a number for which they can write the equation to get that answer.  If they find a correct equation they get a point and circle the number on the table.  Additionally they get a point for each box in the table that is already circled and is adjacent to the  this correct answer.  Once all the boxes are circled, the player with the most number of points wins the game.

The game could be simplified by using only addition and subtraction and using smaller numbers, or made more advanced by using exponents and factorials.

There must be many more games that educators have developed over the years.  It would be great to have a compilation of all these games somewhere!