Schwartz realized that with such a large roster and too many questions, this game did not work for all students. Only the ones he considered "high achievers" really understood the game.
So Schwartz decided to try this game with basketball, but with a twist. This was his game, "My idea was to play off the rules for "Factor Captor" and have the kids take each player's jersey number, find its factors, identify the number as prime or composite, and then add the factors together to come up with a "score" for that player. The player with the highest score would be the team MVP. Then all the scores would be added, giving the team one final, total team score. Then we'd set up a tournament where you would match up against another team, and the team with the highest total score would win and advance."
The edit the game a little and change total score vs. total score to player vs. player. By doing this, the game became more strategic. One team may have more total points over all, but you could still win if you put your players against the correct players. Or so Schwartz thought..
Upon further evaluation, Schwartz and his colleague realized that the order did not matter. The only thing the order changed was the total points scored by each team, but the same team would each time by the same number of points. So Schwartz set up his own Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference All Stars game for the students to figure out that no matter the order, one team would always win by the same number of points.
Schwartz and his colleague created a great game that ended up turning into an even better game for their students. They were able to teach their students about factors, primes and composites while adding the fun of the NBA to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment