MATHS

LEARNING BY DOING: USING CARD GAMES TO EXPLORE THE IDEAS OF BIDMAS AND ALGEBRA IN MATHS AT MCKINNON 

Is there a better way to learn ideas or principles used in everyday maths, than to explore them playing games? The Year 7s didn’t seem to think so! Given a deck of cards and a target number of 55, the students had to use their maths skills (in BIDMAS and algebra) to reach that target number using the five cards they laid out on their desks. Perhaps they would multiply 7 by 8 and subtract 1? What happens if they flipped over a joker and could use any number? Maybe there were two or more ways to solve it? 

The student with the quickest response time (and correct answer), would win the round! This not only tests students’ mental arithmetic, but strongly builds their fluency in Mathematics. 

There were some fierce competitions being had, one memorable game between Ruby and Sapphire (image below) coming down to 1 point! 

“I enjoyed this game a lot, it helps you to use order of operations as well as using algebraic substitution since the joker can be literally any number.” - Eric Jiang 

“This game helped me to use BIDMAS properly and challenged me to get the answers quickly.” - Aysha Zenia Mohammad Shajan

“It helped my BIDMAS improve because I had to use my order of operations” - Coral Shlomo

Students from Year 7, Gloris, Morgan and Janet battling it out. 

Eyal and Daniel going toe-to-toe

We’ve had a couple of great weeks back in the classroom, and are looking forward to many more.

Willem Voorham

Maths Teacher