NUMBER RELAY GAME

 

This is used to review the numbers from one to thirty, and the expressions “~ plus ~”, “~minus~”.

First, have students repeat the numbers after you, using whatever your preferred method is.

Then, on the chalkboard, draw six columns like this:

 

 

 

The boy-girl rows in which students sit in class become the six teams. The student sitting in the front of each row comes up to the board. You give them one of the following math problems:

 

1.         “thirteen plus eight”

2.        “eleven plus nine”

3.        “fifteen plus two”

4.        “twelve plus four”

5.        “seventeen plus five”

6.        “fourteen minus three”

7.        “twenty-two minus six”

8.        “eighteen minus seven”

9.        “thirty minus sixteen”

10.       “twenty-six minus nineteen”

 

The fastest of the six students to write the correct answer on the board (“21” for the first problem, for example) gets a point for their[1] team. Then the students return to their seats and the students in the next seats back have a turn. Repeat this until you exhaust your question list. The team with the most points at the end wins. To award prizes or not is at your discretion.

 

This is a fairly short game – usually ten to fifteen minutes including explanation. With ten questions each student has to go to the board about twice in a class of thirty. This seems adequate to me. You can vary the number of questions to suit your classes and preferences.