In October, grade six takes a turn for the creepy and becomes involved in a full out zombie mathapocalypse. Being the cruel teacher I am, I have been building their anticipation for the past week or so by subtly referencing it, taping up printed off zombies in their lockers, etc. They have even started asking the kids from last year for their advice and info! What they don't know is that we are going to be integrating mathematical concepts and skills into a game format to engage them in their learning! For the past few days I have also been giving the kids "ZCoins" for demonstrating perseverance in math, as well as sharing their mathematical thinking. I haven't told them what they are for, but they have been discussing the fact they probably have something to do with the mathapocalpyse.
Usually we begin on October 1st. On Day 1, I start off by playing an emergency broadcast on the smartboard:
I also tape a Newspaper article to their lockers with a bit of information to pique their interest and tie in some literacy:
At this point, I still haven't really given them any information, but they are dying to find out what is happening! Hook, line and sinker!
To start, I show students all the supplies in the Warehouse that they will be trying to obtain. This same presentation is how I keep track of student supplies. As they earn them, I cut them from the supply pages and paste them on the individual students' page at the end.
Before we get into any math, the kids are given an introduction sheet to get them thinking about their strategy for the game.
From here, we dive into some math. Students design bunkers using area, perimeter and volume.
As students collect supplies, they are responsible for recording their data on a graph
Also, because we are just winding up a unit on patterning, we complete a table of values as the mathapocalpyse goes on. Each day the number of zombies increases by 2Z+3
Each week, students receive updates on the apocalypse, and depending on their supplies, they will either live or become a zombie. If they become a zombie, they can steal supplies from classmates instead of getting them from me.
We also connect probability in by having the kids spin a spinner every week to decide their location on our map. We post their locations on our bulletin board. However, the only catch is that if they have a map as one of their supplies, they have access to a digital map that we update with clues specific to the week to help them survive (ex. there is a 1/6 chance of a zombie attach at the forest this week vs a 4/6 chance at the hospital). Sometimes I have to change the weekly updates if it means that all the students will become zombies, but it usually works out ok.
This year I am also integrating Twitter. I created an account @zmathapocalypse that will be tweeting the updates out to my class. The kids have a lot of fun during this game, and it really does help improve their math skills, while touching on curricular concepts we need to learn.
The link below is to a more comprehensive typed up explantation I did last year.
Thanks for sharing! What an amazing and creative way to get the kids involved in Math.
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