[Edu] Games in the Classroom

[Magi D. Shepley]

I have noticed that my students infinitely prefer playing games over 
doing any other type of work, except perhaps cooking activities.  In the 
past, I've always used ordinary commercial games like Monopoly, Yahtzee, 
Dominoes etc, for doing math.  I've also used Uno...  I have a set of 
"boards" with the 4 arirthmetic operations on them (1 on each card).  
The instructions tell the students to draw one Uno card and place it in 
the '1' box, and then repeat, putting the 2nd card in the other box.  
They also get a worksheet with a table...  one number in one cell, 2nd 
in another cell, operation in the middle, and the answer.
We use the standard Uno scoring for word cards (Reverse, etc are 20, 
Wild cards are 50).  The kids LOVE it... 

Does anybody know, or have you seen, similar things?  The other favorite 
in the classroom is Monopoly.  Scrabble isn't far behind, and Fluxx 
(though, surprisingly, Family Fluxx was not the hit with the kids I 
thought it would be!).

I would love to find some Monopoly math that doesn't involve actually 
playing the game.  I am aware of the Trend publication products that 
have Monopoly themed workbooks... but they aren't really MONOPOLY!  The 
books use the characters, but that is about as far as it goes.

I do teach kids with cognitive impairments (mental retardation), 
emotional disturbance, speech language impairment, etc.  The beauty of 
the Uno math is that the kids can do it independently... and unless 
we're doing a group activity, I usually have the kids all working on 
different things because levels are so different.  And, of course, we're 
ALWAYS trying to encourage independent work and asking for help when 
appropriate.

Magi