Appropriate resources + play

As mentioned above, games are a useful resource to engage children’s interests in maths learning. According to Bragg (2006), in spite of games being seen as warm-up activities that take place before actual learning, if used properly, games can in fact be used to constitute a central part of a mathematics lesson as they build positive environments for learning, enhance students’ motivation and self esteem towards mathematics, promote mathematical learning, stimulates mathematical discussion and interactions.

However, I also believe that it is important to select the right tool for the job. Therefore in my observations of children's play I believe that I should take special care to understand their thinking and reasoning in order to make appropriate and careful assessments of children's current level of mathematical understanding. I should note what their interests are, what they are able to do, in addition to the misconceptions they might hold.

My principles for choosing resources includes avoiding choosing resources or using them in a way that:
• There is no clear or explicit mathematical concept being practiced or taught
• Are mathematically incorrect, and confuse children and lead them to develop misconceptions
• Are developmentally inappropriate for children’s learning
• Are quite frankly, very boring
• Can only done one way, with one right answer, found using one strategy

Rather I should choose good resources and use them in a way that:
• Promotes interactions and mathematical discussions using appropriate mathematical language
• Encourages mathematical thinking and different strategies to be applied to reach conclusions – and that children are asked to justify their positions and transfer mathematical knowledge from one context to another
• Is of interest and meaningful to the children
• Makes explicit links to specific mathematical concepts and aide children’s knowledge development and understanding in these areas

For this reason I’ve taken some games that I have seen children enjoy and turned them into math games. My favourite among these are number guess who and 100-chart battleships because it necessitates turn-taking which promotes interactions, can be changed to increase the level of difficulty, have clear mathematical purposes and foci and because well...they’re fun (See my maths resources post for photographs and further explanation of these resources).