The National K-12 Game-a-thon challenges students to design, build, and share a game that features creative and unusual solutions to mathematical problems.
Teams of one or more students, along with a teacher or parent in a coordinator role, invented card games, board games, apps, and outdoor games that addressed one or more mathematical topics. Throughout the process, students developed critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration skills and more. The challenge is designed to help students engage in math outside of the traditional classroom environment, providing an avenue to promote creative thinking in mathematics.
Thank you to all of our participating students, coaches, and schools. We had entries from nine different states across the country. We also received international entries from Hepworth, Canada!
This year, our judges were blown away by students’ mathematical creativity! The games highlighted below stood out for their stellar abilities to:
From the judges: "Wow, great job! There is so much math happening here. Math problems to complete, correct answers worth 1/4 an ingredient, the recipes involve fractions... Just awesome! We want to play—and cook!”
From the judges: “We love how well laid out the game board is. This game is also very intuitive and easy to follow.”
From the judges: “This game was well laid out and understandable. I loved how negative numbers came into play!”
From the judges: “We love the travel theme! I would have a wild card added to this game—see how many math questions you can answer in 40 seconds! If accurate on all questions, you get to run halfway around the board!”
From the judges: “Love the colorful game board! If a student gets an answer wrong, it would be helpful for the game to provide feedback on where in the problem-solving process they struggled.”
From the judges: “These guys had fun telling us about their game and their presentation was well done! Nice use of a coordinate plane on a map. How could you incorporate more strategy using that feature?”
Congratulations to all of the 2019 Game-a-thon participants! Your coaches will be receiving prizes to distribute to team members. We look forward to seeing your creativity and mathematical problem solving skills shine again next year.
Kelsey Skaggs was the Communications Manager at MIND Education. She enjoys highlighting the work of colleagues and partners who champion MIND's mission.
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