Piles of Tiles

I was at my parents' house for Christmas and came across this game (older than me) in a closet full of board games. Made by The Cootie Company back in the 70's, I give you Op Tile.

There's a lot going on here; game boards, tiles, dice, cards, bell-bottoms, shag carpeting. Instead of typing up the directions, amuse yourself with these:

The tiles look like plastic jello. 

The cards offer some opportunities for strategy throughout the game.

There are many things I like about this game, even though I have never played it. I like the spatial reasoning component, the challenge of placing tiles depending on what you roll with the dice (and the order in which you have to place them), and the demand for strategy that the cards present. I didn't like reading through all the directions to discover all the nuances. Some parts of the game are not intuitive. However, I really like what is intuitive: placing the tiles on your game board in the best way possible to cover the most area (square units) of the game board earning the most amount of points.

I brought the box home to create some adaptations for my students. Here's phase 1: Piles of Tiles. Having recently blogged about weekly POPS, Piles of Tiles will become an additional option for the first P (Patterns/Puzzles) in POPS. In phase 1, I'd like my students to play around with the Piles of Tiles puzzle like this:

I'll pass out this sheet (maybe two) to students and have them cut out all of the figures. They can keep their cut-outs in a plastic sandwich bag.

The student game board will look like this. 

Students can use their cut-outs to fill the 12x12 board with the specific tiles, found in the table at the bottom of the page. Once they have their solution, they can outline each figure within the game board and specify which section refers to figure A, B, C, and so on. They can use colored pencil or crayons to keep each similar figure the same color. For you detailed people, I made the grid so it prints each square unit as 1 cm by 1 cm. Therefore, you get a total of 144 square centimeters. AWESOME!

Students can stay organized and also submit the following to me:

All the Piles of Tiles goods (blank templates) can be found in my weekly POPS folder.

My goals (right now) are to get students to:

• manipulate shapes through rotations and translations
• build their spatial reasoning
• recognize there are multiple solutions
• organize their data
• have a better understanding of area

I'm open to suggestions or feedback, so please let me know.

Since we're on the topic of puzzles, ThinkFun has some great puzzles (as I've mentioned before). Go over to their site and check out these Big Games group activities to use with students. Many of the activities are puzzles you might have seen on paper somewhere, but they rewrote them as group activities to foster collaboration, spatial reasoning, and problem-solving amongst students.

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Weekly POPS

Have you ever tossed a puzzle at one of your students? Y'know, the puzzles kids can play around with using their hands and minds? It's crazy, right?! It's fascinating to watch a student display a wide range of behaviors: curiosity, engagement, perseverance, frustration, and an earnest desire to know the solution if they get fatigued and stumped. I have a couple bins full of puzzles in my classrooms that do this to kids. Students rarely have a chance to play with them, but when they do, they go bonkers in a good way. Occasionally, you'll hear a triumphant yell when someone solves a puzzle. Other students look in disbelief. It's hilarious. My collection of puzzles ranges from the Bedlam Cube (now known as Crazee Cube), to Cannonball Pyramids, to the Rubik's Cube, to Tangrams, to ThinkFun puzzles, to other miscellaneous puzzles I've picked up over the years. A few weeks ago, I was driving home and wanted to know if there was something I could do in math that had a similar magical effect on kids.

Have you ever tossed a puzzle at one of your students? The ones on paper that require logic and critical thinking? Those are crazy too! Kids can really get into them. Around the same time I was thinking about the power of physical puzzles, my school wanted to revamp our weekly intervention/study-hall period. I thought students could benefit from working on logic puzzles, patterns, or Get to Ten. I went to a resource called The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems by Martin Gardner in which Fawn recommended. I came across this Billiard Balls gem in which I remade for my students:

So I got to thinking and thought of some inspirational people/things from my PLN. I've always wanted to incorporate Fawn's Visual Patterns into my classroom more, especially with it's beautiful new makeover. Fawn is also known for her weekly problem-solving tasks. I've also wanted to incorporate more PoWs from the Math Forum. The Math Forum has an abundance of problem-solving tasks that range in difficulty across grade levels. Sign up, yo! Last but not least, Dan Meyer had impeccable timing and recently wrote a very invigorating post on [Fake World] Conjectures that has created quite the buzz in the comments. Personally, he struck a chord with me as he ended it saying:

Find those puzzles in the real world, the fake world, the job world, or any other world - it doesn't matter.

His post and quote made my day (with a smile).

The result of all these crazy things: Weekly POPS.

POPS stands for:

• Patterns (or puzzles like the Billiard Balls above)
• Order of Operations (Get to 10 or Get to 24)
• Problem-Solving

Patterns (or puzzles):
I will include a pattern either from Visual Patterns or one I create. As you can see from the handout below, it's similar to Fawn's form. I am adding a section for students to describe the pattern in their own words. If I decide not to do a pattern that week, I'll do some type of puzzle like the Billiard Ball puzzle above.

Order of Operations:
Students are to use the four given numbers and mathematical operations, symbols, and/or notations to get to the values of ten (or twenty-four). As you can see from the handout, students need to write the expression and evaluate it correctly using Order of Operations (or PEMDAS).

Problem-Solving:
Definitely one of the most important parts of the Weekly POPS, problem-solving. Right now, I'm finding old PoWs from the Math Forum's library to share with my students. As you can see from the handout, be sure to include the Math Forum's copyright information when photocopying. I'm looking for students to organize their work, demonstrate their solution strategy, and think critically.

My goal with Weekly POPS is to get students to really think critically and problem-solve. Why? because they so desperately need it. It's challenging, demanding, and necessary. There's a slight puzzle feel to POPS. Students have really been into it this week.

Students receive the POPS every Friday and have a week to complete it. They'll turn it in the following Friday and receive a new POPS. I've invested a lot of time in class this week going over my expectations, but will use Monday and Tuesday next week to show my classes student POPS that are exemplars, average, and sucky. I told them, "You earn a zero on your POPS, it's the same as POOPS."

I look forward to this adventure with my kids. Here's a folder with the POPS I've created so far. Feel free to join in the action. If this link is broken, please notify me and I'll fix it, unless your name is Fawn.

[UPDATE]: Check out Piles of Tiles that can be used in place of patterns. (12-27-2013)

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