"Just-Right" Math Games

We were so fortunate to have worked with Danielle Iacaviello, our wonderful math coach. She is credited with thinking of Just-Right Math Games. These are games that students will play with a partner to practice math skills at their level.

Similarly to just-right books that students have in their reading baggies; students have just-right games in their math games baskets.

"just-right games" baskets

math center

inside a basket

materials for various games

In this picture, the games are organized by level in different colored baskets. The partnerships are indicated on the corresponding charts above.

Ideally, we try to play everyday for 10-12 minutes, so it's especially important to decide upon the routines that will help playing just-right games go smoothly, and to practice the routines, with students modeling and giving explicit feedback, ex. "What did you notice about the way Chrissa and Stefanie cleaned up their games basket?"

Some things to make sure students are clear on:

*who their partner is

*where in the classroom they'll sit

*who will get the basket; who will put it away

*how to play the different games

*some ways to problem solve when issues between partners arise

We even made a How-to chart via shared writing:

notice how we've incorporated some
writing genre work into math workshop ;)
this will become one of the mentor texts
that we can refer to and revise
during our How-to writing unit

One exciting way to launch playing just-right games is to have partners make their very own follow-the-path gameboard together. We print this one (below) on colored card stock and they decorate it with pictures or stickers. They can practice taking turns moving one bear or other counter to the finish line. We differentiate by giving students dice (with dots or numbers), OR number cards, OR ten-frame cards, etc. Then later we might give them multiple dice or number expressions (2+3). This becomes one of their favorite games!

Super simple and super fun!

blank gameboard
DOWNLOAD here!

 Then we introduce more games, sometimes whole-class (but partnerships may get differentiated/varied materials) or  sometimes we might pull a small group to teach a new game.

More information on the specific games that we play in a future post!

Happy math!

Chrissa & Stefanie