Experience First

Before the game begins, print and cut up the Castle Attack problems, making sure you have enough copies for each group to have each problem. Arrange the stacks of papers face-down on a table or desk near the front of the room close to where you are standing where students have easy access.                       Form teams of 3 or 4 students and give students 60 seconds to draw a castle on the board for their team. During the course of the game, teams will be able to change their own score and manipulate the score of their competition. Give each team 3 marks (stars, X’s, smiley faces, etc.) to represent their three lives.

 

To start the competition, a representative of each team runs to the front table, chooses one problem, and goes back to their team to work on the problem together. You can have students work on mini whiteboards, in notebooks, or right on the paper. Emphasize to students that all group members should be working on the problem, not just one or two.

 

When completed, the team representative shows the answer to the teacher.

 

If the question is accurate and correct, the representative can either remove two lives from a different team (or one each from two different teams) or add one life on to their own. A new representative should now come to the table to choose a new problem.

 

If the problem is not correct, the representative returns to the team and they continue working. (After sustained effort, you might consider allowing a team to select a different problem…)

 

The competition ends when only one team is still alive. (Or whoever has the most lives by the end of the game--to keep students practicing for the whole hour we say groups can still solve problems to “resurrect” themselves and come back to the game)

 

The teacher controls the scoring in this game depending on the time available for play.

 

To hasten the end of the game, certain problems can be worth extra marks.You may deem some problems more difficult than others and randomly award extra points for correct answers.

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Formalize Later

You may wish to spend the final 10 minutes of class answering questions or doing some final whole class review before tomorrow’s assessment. One thing that can be helpful for students is some kind of visual guide for which formulas apply when. A table with columns labeled “Arithmetic” and “Geometric” and rows labeled “nth term” “nth partial sum” and “Infinite sum” is helpful, allowing them to write in the formulas in the appropriate category. Be sure students understand when it is possible to evaluate an infinite sum and when it is not.

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