Probability With Our Kindergarten Buddies

We finished our week of Chance and Probability with a visit to our Kindergarten buddies. To make this visit interesting, we all designed probability games that we could share with them.

Here are a few of the results:

 

This was very simple and very effective. You get six cups (probably label them the right way up next time) and a stack of dice. Each time you roll one you put it in the corresponding cup to see which score occurs most frequently. Obviously, you are more likely to roll a 4 than a 2 when you play this game, disproving the idea that there is an equal chance of getting any number from 1-6.

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A nice use of a colour wheel. You drop the marble on the centre point and see where it rolls. An unusual choice to have 13 sectors but a great way to have 3 chances that are equal and one that is slightly more probable than the others.

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We had talked about the "Monty Hall" problem in class (click here to see a Youtube clip about it) so one student decided to make his own version, where you could win two brussels sprouts, two goats or a car and a lollypop. 

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Here is a very elaborate game that one boy made for his buddy. There are two sets of marbles - one black and one silver. Each player chooses a colour and then rolls the marbles onto the board, recording what colour they land on. At the end of 5 rounds, the players compare the frequencies of each colour.

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Some boys brought in their car collections and got their buddies to sort them based on colour. They prepared a data table and a set of questions for their buddies:

The data table as completed by the buddies.

 

And the set of questions. Love the last question!

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This was a great activity because the student had thought through what they wanted to do and wrote an excellent set of instructions. 

As a writing task, it was excellent. 

As a maths task, it was excellenter.

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Another very elaborate activity that involved heads and tails, a colour wheel, colour stars, glitter, sparkly things and coloured glass jewels. The buddy was in heaven! 

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I always come away from these activities totally blown away by the creativity of my students. They always think of things that I would never have considered and never fail to demonstrate their own learning through what they choose to teach to their kindergarten buddies.

Ah, Year 6 - you've done it again!