Maths Social Activity: Poker Games

Poker cards have the characteristics of easy access, easy operation as a common entertainment tool in people's daily life. Poker cards can be used to teach skillfully. The teachers in our math group made use of poker and designed practical activities for students in different learning.

Middle section (G3-G4 grade group): poker tower

"Poker Tower Building" is an activity that integrates hands, brains and entertainment. It allows students to experience the process of building a tower with poker in the joy of group cooperation, so as to train students' planning and design ability, hands-on practice ability and ability to cooperate with each other. Students have played cards with two boxes of cards by folding, rolling, inserting and other methods without using auxiliary tools.

How to build a tower with both stability and beauty from light playing cards?

"The base must be stable, or it cannot bear the weight."

"Yes, we can use more cards at the bottom." Before the competition started, the students talked about the strategy of building a tower. Some teams completed the construction just after half of the competition time.

Some group members were excited and nervous when they just stood the card tower in front of everyone. The card tower is high enough but the card tower cannot be stacked any more. We found out the reason in time, started it again, and completed the second construction before the end of the game.

The tower of cards contains profound meaning. Students used mathematical geometry knowledge and object stability knowledge in the process of building such as summing up successful experiences and learning lessons from failures so as to better understand the meaning of cooperation.

High Section (G5-G6): poker building

Compared with "tower building", "poker building" is completely different. The students have to consider different points naturally. How can students build the pokers in just 30 minutes?

Students sometimes elaborate, sometimes whispering; Sometimes he frowned and pondered, sometimes he was ecstatic, trying to put his cards high and steady. How many cards should be used to reinforce, and how many cards should be used to increase? What kind of column structure can be the most stable? In constant attempts, each group seeks a balance between "high" and "stable"! Look, some groups adopt folding construction; Some teams cut a hole in the playing cards and put them together; Others built the base of the quadrilateral frame to stabilize the cards.

The small playing cards brought frustration to the students and also brought endless fun. It not only trained everyone's ability to use their hands and brains, but also enhanced the interaction of the team members. Everyone worked together and played happily! Even the students who study from home also build it at home alone and enjoyed the activity.