Using Games with Your Task Cards

I absolutely love using centers in my math class. They give me the opportunity to meet with small groups of students and focus on their specific needs. Meanwhile, the rest of the class can work on practicing the skills they need to improve. After many years of teaching math and understanding what students really need to practice versus what they quickly grasp, I began creating a large variety of task cards.

Many teachers use my task cards to play Scoot, but this whole-class activity doesn’t quite fit during small group time. That's where Game Time comes in.

What I love about these games is that once the students learn how to play them, you can easily swap out the task cards to change the skill they're practicing, without having to teach a new game each time. This variety keeps the students engaged and makes them feel like they’re doing something different with each center rotation, when they’re actually just using new task cards. And setup? It couldn’t be easier!

A Few Game Ideas...

     

Tic-Tac-Toe (FREE): Print out a couple of boards for partners to use and then leave them in the center. Change out the tokens every month to go with the season.

Boom (FREE): Not mine, but a favorite of my students. You'll need an oatmeal or Nesquick canister (large, cylinder kind) and then you're good to go. My kids love this game.

Jenga (FREE): You need a Jenga set you don't mind writing on - check Goodwill. Number each block. Play like regular Jenga, but in order to pull the block, kids have to answer the question on the corresponding task card.

Game Boards (Very Inexpensive): I have a bunch of game boards in my store that can be used throughout the year to go with the different seasons. Each set comes with multiple board layouts so things can look a little different when students visit this center. But, with the rules being the same, kids won't be up at your desk asking questions about how to play.

Set Up

I keep a manila envelope for each game, with the rules on the back for reference, and simply drop in a new set of task cards each week. For the Boom set, I just drop a new set of cards into the canister & it's ready to go. Even Jenga gets its own envelope so that the instructions & cards stay together. 

If students are struggling with a skill, I'll move that set of task cards from one game to another for additional practice during the next center rotation. Otherwise, I rotate through what we just learned, something everyone is struggling with, multi-step word problems, and something related to number sense (rounding often shows up in our rotation).