Let’s play with the numbers

In our school, the parents’ association has drawn ‘snakes and ladders’ in our school yard for the pupils to play during the break! Today though, my 4th graders had the chance to use their favourite game in a different way! I thought that it would be nice to use the game for extra practice on numbers , so we went out in the yard and played for a while! We used it in different ways.

First one student was telling a number to another student and he had to move to the right square. If the student chooses the wrong square , he loses and he has to leave the game.

Next each student picked one square standing still on it.Then I introduced the words “plus”and “minus”.In this stage I was giving the orders (shouting plus 3 or minus 5) and the pupils had to move accordingly.If a student makes the wrong move he has to leave the game.The last one is the winner.

Moving around ,bumping on one another or stepping on the same square was quite entertaining for my pupils.We laughed a lot and everyone, even the weakest pupils participated in the game.In addition, they were motivated to use numbers again and again .

Of course, as I mentioned above, we are lucky enough to have a ready made “snakes and ladder” game in our yard.

However you can use” snakes and ladders” in the classroom as a board game  , make groups of four and play the game, encouraging the students to read the numbers aloud or count before they move in order to npractice numbers.