Todays blog post is about Exponents and making a game out of it. Exponents is the number of times a numbers is multiplied by itself. The driving question for our project was “how does math make games more complex, interesting, and re-playable?” We then had to make a game that has to do with the rules of exponents. I’m going to talk about the process of how my game was created and reflect on what I’ve learned from completing this project. The first thing we did was get into partners and started working.
The first thing we needed was an idea. We wanted the game to be a card game so we looked on the internet for different card games to give us some inspiration for our card game. In the end, we decided to take a few different ideas from different games and add them to our own. Our game was going to be about making the biggest exponent equation that you can with the cards you start with. The game was going to have to be at least 2-4 players so that we can play it with the other grade 9 group. Once we had the plan to our game settled, we started working on draft 1.
We started off with the basic rules for the game. Like I said before, it has to include exponent laws and it was
going to be 2-4 players. We then decided how we were going to use the exponent laws in our game, how a player can win, and more. We planned out the game so that there were base cards and exponent cards. With the cards you were handed out you would have to make a bigger/smaller exponent then your opponents. After we were done most of the planning, we started working on the physical parts to our game. We started constructing our deck of cards since we weren’t allowed to use a regular deck of cards. After we finished all of that, we were done draft 1.
With our second and final draft, we worked mostly on improving the rules. There were a few spelling mistakes and some rules that we didn’t think were needed so we didn’t change much. We worked on 
trying to make each rule more specific and breaking down one rule into many more rules. Once we were done editing for our second draft we handed it in and got ready to present to the other grade 9 class the next day.
Finally it was presentation day, the day we got to present our game and what we’ve learned to the other grade 9 class. We got lots of feedback from each group of grade 9’s. Some of them really enjoyed the game and understood the concept. Others weren’t so good with exponents and needed help with a calculator. Even though everyone’s math skill level was different, everyone had a good time and left the room learning more about exponent laws
From reflecting back on this game, I think i’ve learned more about exponents, and being creative using subjects from school. Making this game has helped me get better at working in groups and trying to shift ideas so that both work. These lessons that I’ve learned are still things I’m trying to get better at in order to get better with working in groups. I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. If you want to play our game, the rules will be below. (You could also use a regular deck of cards if you wanted too) 👋
