Teach 180: The Twenty-Sided Die (Day 24)

Today students worked in groups in class to solve problems related to circles, distance and midpoints.  I could have told students to work on these questions together at their tables.  However, when you can add points to something to make it a competitive game, you get more buy-in and students have more fun.  And let's face it, it's more fun for the teacher, too.

Because students were working together, there was a high probability of each team getting the questions right.  Having all teams get one point for a correct answer seemed a bit boring.  So, I introduced a 20-sided large foam die to our game.  We had four teams and the first team rolled the die.  It was 18.  That meant that particular team could get 18 points, if they got the question right and all other teams would get 1 point.  Basically, each team had a chance to get up to 20 points when they rolled the die. This definitely added to the excitement of answering the questions and you could hear a collective groan when one team rolled only a 3!  Who says learning can't be fun?