Are you looking for a fun game that helps student feel the math love this time of year? Do you want a whole class activity that will feel like a reward for students? Are you interested in maybe taking some of the middle school drama out of Valentine’s Day? (ha! That last one’s impossible. Have you ever had dance duty at the junior high Valentine’s Day dance?)
Playing Valentine’s Guesses and Wagers is a great way to get math students thinking about numbers, evaluating reasonableness of answers, and have some fun at the same time.
What is Valentine’s Guesses and Wagers?
What’s the Valentine’s Guesses and Wagers game? Well, in a nutshell, this game presents students with a series of interesting questions with a range of numerical answers. Students generate answers, then have to evaluate their confidence in their answers. It’s a fun game with a lot of solid math practice going on at the same time. Sneaky!
This whole class math trivia game gets students to think and share ideas about the reasonableness or ridiculousness of potential answers. It’s a great way to reinforce mathematical thinking without including math that reviews specific skills. It’s more about grabbing students’ attention and getting them thinking about math.
Valentine’s Math Guesses and Wagers is a low-prep game, presented through a projector and played with prepared printable pieces in small groups. It can also be played with students answering questions individually.
What kinds of questions are in this game?
Students will be asked questions about Valentine’s Day like, “How many roses are grown for Valentine’s Day?”, “What percent of women send flowers to themselves on Valentine’s Day?”, and “What year were conversations hearts invented in?”
One of my favorite things about this game is that no one knows all the answers. For many of the questions, no one will even be close to the right answer. This makes this game fun for students at all skill levels. My students in intervention enjoy this as much if not more than students in my other classes.
How does this game get students thinking about math?
One of the biggest benefits of this game is it really gets students to talk about the reasonableness of an answer. For example, saying that conversation hearts were invented in the 2000s or the 1500s are not very reasonable answers.
After students have the answers to some of the questions, they’ll also start to use their knowledge to adjust future answers. Once they understand just how much money is spent on Valentine’s Day, for example, they can make more reasonable answers another question about the average amount spent on a Valentine’s Day dinner. Before I started researching for this game I had no idea that $27,000,000,000 is spent on this holiday. Wow!
How to play in teams (my preferred method)
When you play this Valentine’s math trivia game you can either play in teams or individually.
When you plan in teams, you present a question and let each team settle on their best consensus guess. After they try to make reasonable guesses, then they have a chance to wager points.
This wagering part is probably the most fun part of the whole game. To do this, all teams post their guesses (I’d use dry-erase sleeves and line them up on the whiteboard). Then, each group takes their wagering chip and places it on the answers they feel are closest to the actual answer, without going over.
One thing that makes it so fun is that you can wager on other people’s answers after seeing that their answer seems more reasonable. Students can place their wagers on their own answer, or on the other groups’ guesses. They have a 2 point chip and a 1 point chip to place, so they can spread their luck across a couple of answers.
Once the answer is revealed, points are awarded to the team that had the closest answer without going over (3 pts), and then all of the teams that placed wagers on that answer get the points they wagered.
Related: To see more about how to play, check out the Christmas Trivia Game article here.
How to play individually
This math trivia game can also be played with students playing individually.
To have students play as individuals, just choose the multiple choice version of this trivia game. The questions will be the same, but students will choose among prepared answer choices.
You can have students create their own game board to track their progress. They’ll keep track of their points throughout the game. This can be a simple sheet like the one below:
Now you’re ready to play! Present the first question and ask students to choose their top two answers. They’ll decide how confident they are with each answer and place wagers on them. They put 2 points on their favorite answer, and 1 point on their second-choice answer. If they feel very confident in one answer, they can choose to put all 3 of their points onto their one answer.
Finally, reveal the answer by clicking on the screen and going to the next slide. Students receive points based on the answers they chose and the wagers they placed. Continue playing until all 13 questions are answered or time is up (you may choose to only use some questions due to time).
Try it out!
This game works great as a way to get kids engaged, even if they’re a little distracted by junior high Valentine’s Day drama. Give this a try around Valentine’s Day and see how students respond. They’ll love to interact with each other and discuss the answers to some of these funny questions.
If you’re looking for even more Valentine’s Day math activities, be sure to check out “10 Ways to Add Valentine’s Day to a Middle School Classroom.”
Thanks so much for reading. Until next time!
