As per my typical Tuesday teaching schedule, I had a double with my B1 math class today. The first half of class we did the page in their text book. There’s no point in me going through the problems step by step (two digit subtraction with borrowing) because everyone can do it fairly easily. Recently, I’ve put a twist on it to make it a bit more fun, I told the kids that I’d give a sticker to the first boy and the first girl who completed the page 100% correctly. In addition, if everyone gets 100%, I’ll give the entire class a sticker. We’re getting closer to everyone getting 100% on the page. What’s stopping us? Silly mistakes like borrowing when you don’t need to or forgetting that you did borrow. No big deal. I still make mistakes and I’ve been doing this for… well… you don’t need to know how long I’ve been doing it. Once we were done with the page in the book, it was game time.

Today’s game was Math Basketball. We happen to have a toy basketball hoop and some (albeit moderately deflated) balls on the bookshelf in the foreign teachers’ office. I have no idea where the set came from. But hey. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. When there are materials for activities, use them!

Here’s how I structured the game. Divide the class into two teams. My favorite method of doing this is by rolling a die and then counting around the table. The first person goes on Team A. Roll again, counting from the next person. The person you land on goes on Team B. Repeat until everyone is assigned to a team.

I had three levels of math problems worth 1 (single digit addition/subtraction), 2 (two digit addition/subtraction without carrying/borrowing) or 3 (two digit addition/subtraction with carrying/borrowing) points. Students chose the point value they wanted. If they answered correctly (I supplied pencil and paper), they had the opportunity to shoot a free throw for an extra point.

I put a time limit on the game (as in we played until the end of class) but you could easily do X number of rounds. At the end of the game, add up the points. The team with the most points wins. In my case they get a sticker.

You can easily adapt this game to other subjects. How about spelling for a phonics class? Or identifying parts of speech for a grammar class? Be creative! Have fun with it!

And don’t let the lack of a basketball hoop and a ball stop you. A wadded up piece of paper and an empty trash can will work just as well.