Rock & Roll Math Game

Hi everyone! It's Katie from Simply Creative in KY! 

I'm here today to share with you a new math game that is an absolute hit in my room. It's extremely engaging and needs ZERO worksheets or materials to prep. It's called Rock & Roll Math, and it's perfect the perfect game to play during a unit on place value. Stay tuned for the free directions download at the end of my post!

Let me step back a few months and share with you where I got this idea. Back in October my school sent me on the best PD trip EVER. I went to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Regional Conference in Indianapolis with a few other teachers from our district and it was a blast! We got to choose every session we went to and had no restrictions. It was so nice to be able to choose which sessions to go to based on our needs. 

My favorite session was led by Jane Felling from Boxcars and One-Eyed Jacks. She led a workshop all about Place Value in K-2. It was seriously AMAZING. She crammed a ton of quick, easy to implement place value games in her one hour session. The one I'm sharing with you today is one we played in her session.

After her session I ended up buying $30 worth of dice. My husband didn't quite understand my excitement about dice, but I know you all will... Please drool over this.

I bought a cheap bead box from Michaels to store my "special" dice.

Ok, now let's talk about how to play Rock & Roll. I made sure to play this with my whole class on the carpet to model how to play before sending my students off in groups. It's best to play in groups of three, but it possible to play in fours if needed, but I like to keep it as small as possible.

In the group, two students should have dice. We are working on 3-digit place value, so each student had 3 dice, and the third person was the referee. 

The referee asks the players, "Ready to Rock?" 

The players  call back, "Ready to Roll!" Players pick up dice as they say this.

The referee says, "Roll!"

Players roll their dice and race to arrange them to make the biggest number possible. Once one of the players has arranged their dice the way they'd like, they yell, "Rock and Roll!" Once one player yells this, the other player(s) must immediately stop arranging their dice and put their hands on their head. 

This group played in fours due to my numbers, so they had to compare three numbers and decide which was the greatest.

Next, the referee leads the players into comparing the numbers they've made. The player who makes the largest number gets a point. I had my students use a whiteboard to keep track of the score. Also, they rotated around the referee job after each round so that everyone got equal playing time.

Here's a video of this group of kiddos playing (please excuse the quality -- making/editing video clips is clearly NOT one of my strengths). I had to cut the video short at the end (where they were comparing the numbers) because of a classroom interruption, but this should give you a good idea of what it looks like. You can also hear other groups in my class calling out, "Rock and Roll!" 

I really hope you get a chance to try out this game in your classroom! While it may make your room a bit loud, the engagement factor is huge. It's the perfect Friday game! If you're not working on 3-digit place value, you can always adapt this to 2-digit place value. You can have the kids make their numbers and call out how many tens and how many ones, expanded form, etc. You can also use regular dice instead of the 10-sided dice that I used. The possibilities are endless!

I've included a quick printable of directions for you. Click the picture to download the directions for free. This is my adaptation from the Boxcars and One-Eyed Jacks presentation - which I would HIGHLY recommend if you ever get the chance!

See you next month!