More Fun on the Coordinate Plane
By: Mary Kienstra on: February 5, 2015 in: coordinate grid, Engagement, games
Keeping with my recent theme of the coordinate plane, (See these posts for more information), I was looking to find more ways to use the ordered pairs in daily life. This time, I decided to combine my students’ favorite games, SET,
This is the SET card game version.
with the coordinate plane. The purpose, of course, is to use the SET game to have more fun on the coordinate plane.
The SET GAME is a puzzle game that uses cards that have four features: symbols, shading, color, and number of symbols. To form a SET you must have 3 cards where the features are all the same OR the features are all different. The SET GAME is available with real “cards” as well as in an online version. In each case, the cards are positioned in a 3 x 4 grid for the players to observe and to form a SET.
I am lucky to have a SmartBoard in my classroom where my students can interact with the SET GAME. When we first started using the online SET GAME, my students, my
students would come to the board and tap the cards to form a set. But once I began to view the SET GAME as a coordinate plane, we changed the rules for our classroom version of the game on the SmartBoard.
This is the online version of the SET GAME
In our new version of the SET GAME, two students stand by the SmartBoard while their classmates look on, trying to decide which cards will form a SET. When someone thinks they have identified a SET, that student has to identify the cards by their ordered pair name. For example, they might say (1,2), (3,4), and (2,2) and then the students at the SmartBoard find those cards on the coordinate plane and tap them to form the SET. Students are engaged in playing SET and practicing naming and identifying points on the plane.
This new and improved version of our classroom game gives kids more practice with working on the coordinate plane. They name the points and communicate that to their classmates who find them on the SmartBoard. However, without a SmartBoard for the online interaction, students could play on any device or with the card game version.
Lately, we’ve expanded the grid of the SET GAME to the other quadrants to give even more practice in identifying points on the coordinate plane. Once students develop a solid understanding of the first quadrant, change the location of (0,0) and students can learn to operate efficiently in the other quadrants too. It’s all about having more fun on the coordinate plane.
How have you changed favorite games to include more math concepts? It’s fun to do once you start looking for the opportunities!
