As Alberta's Education moves towards a focus on Literacy and Numeracy throughout schools, I began a movement in my personal life to expand my own basic math skills. One of the ways I did this was through returning to some of my childhood math based card games. Growing up with grandparents who spent time developing my math skills with the help of games like Cribbage, I felt inspired to bring this to the children at my school.
As the composition of my Common Sense Club was made up of mostly grade one to three children, I wasn't able to introduce crib as a universal game. However, we did play war with the adaptation of addition and subtraction for some students, known as "math war". Other students played "Go-Fish" which also helps with basic number recognition. Because of the time constraints of the lesson, I split these games into centres and had the students move through all of the games. The hope of this was for students to focus on enjoying the connection made with others while playing card games. This way, they would be more inclined to play these games on their own and continue to sharpen their math skills and interpersonal relationships!
Take a look at the attached powerpoint slides for more information about the lesson. The slides move chronologically. These slides are taken from a larger lesson.
The clip attached below is the video that we watched as a class to explain the importance of being a gracious winner and looser.