Birdies went flying yesterday as students practiced addition facts. After an inspiring visit to the Target Dollar Spot this weekend I had an idea to merge badminton with our 100s chart painted on our school’s playground to practice math.
Students found out it wasn’t as easy as it looked to land a birdie on the 100s chart. Cheers rang out when students landed one in a square.
Since it was an introductory lesson to teach students how to play an outdoor math game, we played as a whole class. Normally students would play as a team, working together to land birdies on numbers on the 100s chart twice, adding the numbers together, and recording the sum. Knowing that landing on the chart could take a while we came up with a rule, miss the chart twice and you scored a zero for that turn.
Yesterday, to introduce the game, we had one student at a time come up to try out hitting the birdie onto the 100s chart. Then as a group we recorded the number, added it to the next students number and found a sum for that round. We continued playing like that until all rounds were complete. Then to make sure everyone had a chance, I called up remaining students to take a turn practicing hitting the birdie with the racket.
In our second grade version, I quickly learned at the end of 5 rounds that my original plan of adding up all 5 rounds of sums might be a tiny bit more difficult than I first thought. With a small adjustment, comparing teams sums each round, looking for the largest sum for each round to determine a winner, I think we will have a more successful game. It will also be a great way for students to continue practicing comparing numbers, a skill we covered earlier in the year.
On the 100s chart court, it was so nice to hear calls of encouragement, cheers, and see students excited to practice math skills. I can’t wait until students know all of our outdoor math games so we can start math centers outside! Tomorrow, molkky is in the plans to go over.
If you think this game would be a good fit for your own class you can grab a copy of the rules and recording sheet on my TpT page.
Katy
