3.21.2011

Review Pong

I got this game off of the ilovemath.org wiki but I had to change some of the problems since we hadn't done all of that yet. It's a review game based on the 'win a fish' carnival game.

Original Directions:
Remember the game at the fair where you try to toss a ball in a fish bowl and if so, you take home the fish?  Same kind of concept.

My "fish pond" is made from the lid of the copier paper box. I then taped down some plastic cups. Since I needed 3 different colors, I took overhead pens and went around the inside top part of the cup (red, black, and red). I filled the lid full of cups trying to not have any spaces. I just put tape on the bottom of the cups. I have a ping pong too.

Students are in groups. I take turns asking groups for a problem. Everyone works the problem. Each group shows me 1 answer. One point for correct answer, extra points are gained by getting the ping pong ball in a cup.

I have the lid of cups on a desk and another desk in front of that. The students stand behind a line that is about 2 or 3 feet away. I ask that they toss the ping pong ball so that it hits the first desk and bounces it in to the cups. If it bounces out, no points, if it gets stuck on top of all of the cups, no points.

My Take:
I didn't give any points for the right answer. I put colored post-it flags inside the cups that were worth different points. But I also noticed there were yellow, green, and blue plastic cups at Wal-Mart so I will be picking some of those up soon.


In the picture above, I ran out of cups AND they were out of the right size so I filled the rest with small cups. I don't know if that made it harder or easier but it's what I'm working with. So then the students win different points depending on what color they win.

The students like this game because they think it will be so easy and they will be great at it. The truth is, they suck. They complain that our desks are slanted and that throws off their ability to bounce but I just make fun of them and play on. And if you haven't already made the connection, students refer to this as beer pong. I originally called it fish pong and now I call it nothing, I just bring out the box.

I made my own game for similar triangles and one for trig ratio practice.

8 comments:

  1. haha. When they're older, they'll say, "I owe my killer beer pong skills to my math teacher!" Love it!

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  2. Well we are supposed to relate to real life applications, right? :)

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  3. Thanks! I made one for solving absolute value equations and inequalities!

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  4. What a great game! I'm trying this tomorrow!
    Thanks for the idea.
    Cindy
    @cgrmath

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  6. This is a great idea! Question: Did you have every person try to make a ball in the cups each time or did you have one representative from each group and then take turns? Also were they allowed to try to throw the ball only if their math answers were correct?

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    Replies
    1. They can only shoot if their answer is correct and only one representative from the group shoots. I make them switch every time unless they don't want to shoot.

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