This game is suitable for upper elementary school through high school. You can play it with any math topic. Prepare a sheet of problems of varying difficulty. Place a sheet on each desk in the room. Play music and let students work on the problems individually. Now stop the music and collect half the sheets. Turn the music on again, and let students work in pairs on the remaining sheets. When the time is right, turn off the music, and collect half the sheets again so that students work on the remaining problems in groups of four. Finally, play the music again and let students finish the assignment in groups of four. The teacher scores the exercise by counting the total correct answers on all the sheets collected through all the rounds so the group scores best when everyone works fast or when kids who can solve the hard problems focus on them. After your class tries this once or twice, they will figure out strategies to maximize the overall group score.
(This game was developed by Suzanne Lyons, founder CooperativeGames.com)
Teacher-Student Role Play
Pass around a hat containing various math problems on a strip of paper. Provide two copies of each problem. Papers with the same problem should be both labeled as 1, 2, 3 etc. to make it easy for students with the same problem to find each other. Students pair up and solve their problem together. When they have completed the problem, they become the “teachers” of it. Now pairs of students join to make cooperative groups of four students. The “teachers” teach the problem to the “students”—their partners who haven’t yet worked the problem.
(This game was developed by Suzanne Lyons, founder CooperativeGames.com)
Giant Animals
This game is good for young kids. No materials are required. Children play together to turn their bodies into different parts of a giant animal. To begin, the children can suggest a specific animal or “giant” and propose its body parts. Each child selects a different body part to be. Children team up to make a total giant animal. Once they have their animal assembled, they can try to get it moving—rolling over, jumping, stretching, wagging its tail, etc. If you have a big class with lots of animals, you can make a GIANT animal zoo.
(This game is adapted from Terry Orlick, “Cooperative Games and Sports”)
Collective Hoops
This game is good for older kids. It requires one balloon or beach ball and one hula hoop for each pair of students.
To begin, scatter the hula hoops on the gym floor. Students work in pairs. Partners tap the balloon or ball back and forth in a nonstop fashion. At the same time, they endeavor to pick up a hoop, then tap their balloon through it, and place the hoop back on the floor. Partners keep moving in a different direction to pick up a different hoop. Every time they complete the goal, they score a point. The goal is for the entire group to score as many points as possible in a given time period. This is a very active game that takes physical as well as mental—and social—coordination.
(This game comes from Terry Orlick, “Cooperative Games and Sports”)
Tug of Peace
Participants group themselves around a rope that has been tied in a knot to form a circle. Players squat down around the rope, holding the rope with both hands. At the count of three, all players lean back and-using the energy of the group-they stand up. When everyone has stood up (and cheered), players can, on the count of three again, carefully lean back into a squat.
In this game, the counterbalance support that players provide to one another is a graphic representation of mutual support and cooperation. It’s a totally different experience than Tug-of-War, which can be a painful exercise that activates aggression and leaves players in the dirt.
(This game comes from Maria Sapon-Shevin, “Because We Can Change the World”)