Percent Bingo

Summer ’15 Update

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Hello! Hope you are having a great summer so far.

I wanted to give everyone an update on what has been happening at Fluency Games during the summer. I did take a short vacation and spent a couple of days being a tourist in Chicago with my wife, but other than that, we’ve been working on getting ready for updates and apps for the new school year!

Percent Bingo

Development should be completed in the next couple of weeks. Once the game is finished, there will need to be some minor user interface issues to work through — primarily setting up for multiple screen resolutions.

The game will feature multiple game levels to play, but will also feature adaptive game play– the game will get harder and introduce new values as fluency with converting fractions and decimals increase. Be sure to read how Percent Bingo is played and download the teacher resources for the paper-and-pencil game.  Read more about Percent Bingo at Fluency Games!

BrainPOP

I’ve been working closely with BrainPOP over the past few weeks to integrate Addition Blocks and Multiplication Blocks into their reporting system/teacher dashboards. They are using these games as a test case to see how viable is the process.

Web Portal

I’ve hired a developer to work on a parent/teacher web portal for accessing the Fluency Games apps Student Progress and Performance Analysis reports. Coming this fall will be the ability for teachers and parents to monitor students’ increase in fluency and determine which fact families they are having problems.

Addition Blocks/Multiplication Blocks

These games will have a two new features in the next release:

  • Anti-Cheat code that detects when the kids are quickly and randomly tapping or clicking digits
  • Score bonuses for faster responses – Both games will have a countdown bonus points scored for the quicker the players destroy the target blocks

Subtraction Blocks

The core game has been completed and work on individual levels has begun. Subtraction Blocks will be a different game than its predecessors (Addition Blocks/Multiplication Blocks), with new game play mechanics, great graphic design, over 80 pre-designed levels with specific goals and challenges. This will be much more of a ‘Candy Crush’ game than the other two. Read more about Subtraction Blocks!

Let’s Play Percent Bingo (Teacher’s Guide!)

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In the last post, I introduced Percent Bingo, a favorite of my former students… So, in this post I wanted to go over more of the mechanics of playing the game quickly and efficiently.

Setup and preparation again is the key. Students kept their Percent Bingo sheet in their “Class Folder”, and the class setup was very similar to how I did my Friday Mad Minute:

  • Class Folders passed out before class began
  • Percent Bingo as first item on the Agenda
  • Counting tokens used as markers on desks/tables

Students were trained so that when they came into the room they knew to look at the board. When they got to their seats, their folder was on their desk (or on the way) and they could get out their Percent Bingo Sheet and tokens/markers. Before class began the students are ready to play!

Now, the first few times the student play the game, use the time for review/teaching moments:

  • Review/remind that decimals are converted to percents by multiplying by 100, that is, moving the decimal two places to the right; it doesn’t matter if the decimal is 0.5, 0.05, or 5.
  • Review that fractions can be converted by getting the denominator to 100– (In the Percent Bingo case, all the percents are divisible by 5, so you can always multiply the denominator by a number to get 100). It also doesn’t matter if the fraction is ½ or 3/2, the process is the same.
  • Review that some of the fractions could be simplified. For example, 15/30 can be reduced to ½ first.
  • Review that mixed numbers can be converted to improper fractions first, or even better, thought as 100 % + fractional part (1 ½ = 100% + 50% = 150%).

I also reviewed as I called out the number; I did not have 10 minutes of ‘re-teaching’ and then playing the game…For example, I would call out “0.3… can anyone tell the rest of the class how to convert that to a decimal?”… or, “3/10… who knows what do with this one?”

The best part is that after only two or three times that you play the game, you will not need to review at all, and students will have started committing common fractions (3/5, 4/5, 16/20, etc.) into long term memory.

Download the Percent Bingo Board and Teacher Resources.

Most importantly, Have fun with them, and they will have fun playing the game!

Enjoy playing percent bingo! Your kids will love to play