100 Starburst Candy Drop

I know it has been awhile since my last post but with a new baby, life gets pretty busy. Here is a reflection on something I did with my tutoring students last Thursday. 

I love Starburst candy chews! I actually came up with an idea to have some fun with my tutoring group using them. 

There was a game show about 4 years ago called, "The Million Dollar Money Drop" hosted by actor and comedian Kevin Pollak. The premise was that two contestants, usually connected in some way, were given $1,000,000 to start the game and were given 7 multiple choice questions. As each round progressed the questions get harder and the choices get less and less. 

For example, Round 1 they are given a question and 4 answer choices. Then in Round 2, they are given a question and 3 possible answers and so forth until the 4th round where they are given a question and only 2 possible answers. For each question, they have to shift their money around to the answer they think is correct or if they are not sure, they can do multiple answers. They have to leave one answer choice empty if they decide to do more than 1 answer. With 4 choices, they can fill 3, 3 they can fill 2 and so on..

Now the fun part, as answers are revealed, if they put money on any incorrect answer, they lost that amount of money. If they lose all their money, the game is over. 

So, I decided to use this concept with the kids that I tutor at the Boys and Girls Club. I got some questions, some Starburst candies and got everything set up. 

I arrived on Thursday and explained the rules and they were eager to get started. They had to work together as a group (there were 4 kids today, usually I have 5) and I counted out 100 Starburst candies and started asking questions. 

I would like to say they got every question correct, but this was not the case but it was fun watching them try to decide on answers and moving all those candies around (good thing they are individually wrapped). 

They lost the whole pile a few times but I gave them second chances on some of the questions and at the end I gave them some Starburst as a consolation prize. I may do this again with them but we will see.

Tutoring Session Success!

Yesterday was a better day with my tutoring kids at the Boys and Girls Club! I found this game online through Teachers Pay Teachers called "Snowball!" and I decided to play it with them. They had a blast and it gave me a chance to see what they knew and did not as far as their computations skills.

A brief summary of the game: You have three dice and you can choose the level of difficulty to challenge your students. There are 3 different levels:

 Snowball 100 requires students to roll 2 dice and add the totals until they reach 100. The “twist”? If they roll doubles, they need to SUBTRACT that amount.

Snowball 200 requires students to roll 3 dice and add the totals until they reach 200. The “twist”? If they roll “3 in a row”, they have to dthe total
(ex. 3,4,5 or 1,2,3)

Snowball 300 requires students to roll 3 dice, add two, and multiply by the third until they reach 300. The “twist”? If they roll “3 in a row”, they have to subtract the total
(ex. 3,4,5 or 1,2,3)

I chose to do the Snowball 300 and the students had a blast! Throughout the game, I got a chance to test their multiply skills, their addition and subtraction skills and their understanding of positive and negative integers. I will definitely be playing this game again!