Rekenrek duel

Hello Mathematicians, we hope you are having an amazing day today.

We wanted to show you a game called Rekenrek Duel. You might have seen one way to play this and we'd like to show you another way that really makes your brain think super hard. So, back to playing Rekenrek duel. Here is the king of the jungle here, our lion, "raagh", and also our giraffe who as luck would have it his head keeps falling off. Not falling off but popping out of the photo. I think giraffes would probably have this problem very often they're so tall.

So, in this case we also need some counters, so today we're using dried pasta for our counters. And we need some number cards from zero through to twenty. And this time the way that we play; Oh, we also need some cardboard or paper to record on.

Is the players, the lion, the king of the jungle and the tallest of the jungle, maybe, have to, they could lead into an interesting debate on why the lion is the king of the jungle, 'cause the, the giraffe is taller. So you could say the giraffe is the tallest, the king of the jungle because they're the tallest, anyway I should keep going.

Ok, you're, you might be saying but maybe an elephant's bigger maybe?

Let's play. So what we need to do is in this case, turn over a card, so we're going to work with seven. And these guys have to take it in turns until they can't think of any other ways to make seven on the rekenrek using just one or two slides. So let's play. The lion is going to be represented by the black marker, and the giraffe will be represented in orange on our game over here. So the lion can start first and, and the lion might think, well I know seven is double three and one more, so double three looks like this. Which is six and one more makes seven. So, record, seven is double three and one more.

And now giraffe needs to think of another way to make seven that's different in one or two slides. So the giraffe might think, well, I know that seven is five and two. Is that what you guys were thinking? Oh, nice thinking like the giraffe. So in one slide can move across five and in another move can slide across two. So it can record seven is five and two and now it's back to the lion. And the lion might think, Oh, well, actually. I know that seven is three less than ten.

Yes, some of you had that idea. Good idea, so there's three 'cause my brain can subitise that many. And so I can move this across in one slide and say this is seven because it's three less than ten. So seven is three less than ten. Oh, ok, now the giraffe is having to think hard and he could say, oh, hold on a second, seven is three and four. Did some of you have that one? Ah ha, so there's three and four in two slides.

Yes, and it is similar to this idea of double three and one more, but it's different because they've named it differently and they've said three and four, looked at chunks of three and four. Where as here, it was two chunks of three and one more. So seven, and you can have some nice debates about that with your friends that you're playing with. Seven is three and four. Ok, lion back to you.

And now the lion's, thinking, oh what else could I, do? I know. What about seven is six and one? Yes, so how could we make six in one slide? Yeah, we could see here's a chunk of five and one more is six. And. Yes, one makes seven, so seven is six and one. Ok, oh now giraffe, ooh I think the giraffe has one. What about that, seven is thirteen less than, than twenty? Yes, so that means they need to leave behind one whole ten and leave behind three more, so that should be seven. So they could say seven is thirteen less than twenty.

Oh, that was a good play by the giraffe. And now the lion's, thinking I can't think of any others that I could say. And so in this round the token goes to the giraffe 'cause the giraffe was the last person to come up with an idea and they put the card to the bottom.

And they start again.

Over to you, mathematicians, to play Rekenrek Duel Level 2.

So what's some of the mathematics here?

This game encourages students to think about important relationships, such as how many more or less are needed to get to the nearest five or ten to notice, develop and use part-part-whole number, knowledge and to use numbers flexibly. These are all essential to being able to develop and use flexible strategies when working in additive and multiplicative situations. Have fun mathematicians until we meet again.