SAVY 2019: Session 6, Day 1 – Games Galore (Rising 1st/2nd)

Posted by hallep on Monday, July 22, 2019 in Grade 1, Grade 2, SAVY.

What is power? Who holds power? Is power good or bad? How does power relate to game playing? We looked at beginning to evaluate each of these questions and more. Our universal concept this week as power as it related to fairness. We decided that power is the person who is in charge, and is smart enough to get and keep power. Several of us thought that power can also have a caring side. When we connected power to games, we thought that one way to have power when playing games, is to not follow the rules. We will be adding to these connections all week.

Speaking of fairness, we began a discussion on what fairness is and what it is not. Overall we came up with the understanding that fairness is when all players have equal chance to win or lose. We will be discovering how to determine what is not fair as we experiment with games throughout the week. The vocabulary we worked with today was likely, unlikely, possible, impossible, certain, equal chance, rules, luck, chance, predictions, theoretical, experimental, data, outcomes, and probability.

We began with collecting data of flipping coins (pennies), Heads and Tails. First, partners collected data on flipping one coin and as they recorded the outcomes, then partners looked flipping 2 coins at a time and recording the outcomes. When we discussed our findings, students said that having more coins to flip increased the probability of getting more heads or more tails and a better chance of winning. We also began using our probability vocabulary to make statements such as, on each coin toss, it is certain that someone will either get heads or tails. We also stated that if a person is on a success “roll”, they might be more likely to continue that winning streak.

After playing a card game of War and recording the data of who won after playing three rounds,  everyone concluded that War is a game of equal chances so it is a fair game.  We then spent some time continuing to understand the meaning of certain, impossible, likely, unlikely and possible by coming up the situations and placing them on a continuum line. So far, we all seem to think most games are fair…but how can we train ourselves to identify when games are not fair? We will investigate this tomorrow.

Our center of rotations helped us think about chance/odds through looking at different types of spinners and dice. We experimented with getting odds and evens based on the availability of numbers to land on with different spinners and dice. We love playing these games and now we are learning to evaluate each game we play to determine fairness or lack of it.

Can’t wait to play (and learn) more tomorrow!

Ms. Tyson