A Clever Classroom Idea for Dice Games
We want to share a great idea for the primary classroom, one which is so simple we wish we had thought of it. It's the use of dice in small, see-through containers when playing maths games in the primary classroom. We bought eight containers for £1.00 in Poundland, and think that's money well spent as a means of preventing the inevitability of dice flying all over the place. As a bonus too it's easy to check whether dice have 'gone missing' at the end of the session.
There are lots of maths games and investigations which use dice but here is a fun two-player game that uses two dice and is ideal for 9 to 11 year olds. It's called 'Sixes' and the winner is the first player to get 100 or more.
Both players start with zero and take turns to roll two dice, by shaking the containers and letting the dice settle. During their turn each player can roll the dice repeatedly adding the totals after each roll. If one six is thrown the turn is ended and nothing is added to their running total. Rolling a double six ends the turn and zeros the total score.
If you prefer a friendlier version you can adapt the game so that rolling a double six just ends the player's turn without resetting their score to zero, in the same way as a rolling a single six.
