Thought 23: Guess Who’s Back?
The time has come for my first blog post of PLP 9. For our first project of the year, we had to make a board game using laws of exponents. My partner for this project was Colton. I will link his blog at the end of this one.
Our game was based around the classic party game, cup pong. Players throw a numbered ping pong ball into an arrangement of numbered plastic cups. The ping pong ball represents the exponent and the cups represent the base. If you miss the cup, you must pick up a punishment card. The first player to remove all of the other players cups wins.
This project, like all others used several curricular competencies.
The first competency is Reasoning and Analyzing. This competency is about using logic and patterns to play games and solve puzzles. I think that I demonstrated this competency during the construction of my game. Colton and I went through several drafts for our pieces and rules to create a balance of a game that is fun to play and gives good explanations of mathematical concepts.
Second, Communicating and Representing. For this project, that meant representing mathematical ideas in physical, pictorial, and symbolic forms. I think that I showed this competency in my game by making lots of potential equations, which makes the game interesting and replayable.
The last competency is Applying and Innovating. This competency is used in all of our projects and is used to evaluate how efficiently and effectively we spent our class time. I think that I showed this competency in the project introduction lesson. For the introduction, we had to create a game using a small list of pieces: some dice and some small bits of paper. We were able to create an interesting and unique game with our pieces.