Introduction
Games are able to provide a fun and motivating environment for teaching and learning of certain subjects. Role- playing games allow students to assume the role of a character in the game world and to determine the actions of their characters based on the characterization. This would provide an exciting and motivating strategy for students to practice skills that they have already learned. This paper describes the development of a role-playing game in learning mathematics. Due to its interactive and stimulating nature, the game is suitable for school children in learning this subject.
Most students think that mathematics is a difficult, complicated and confusing subject because it involves formulae and calculations. Others see mathematics as a boring subject which sometimes is unrelated to their real-life situations. On the other hand, conventional learning instruments for learning mathematics such as text book, revision book, and courseware are not very effective in ensuring a mastery of the subject. Among the problems associated with the conventional learning instruments are: lack of motivation, not very interesting / boring, little encouragement for self-learning , less meaningful and no continuity.
People learn best when they have a strong and immediate motivation to acquire new knowledge, and when they are having fun. Role playing games are able to create a fun, motivating, and interactive virtual learning environment. Furthermore, for today’s kids, raised on computers and video games, presenting concepts in a form they are predisposed to love is a great formula for success
Cognitive play is called as symbolical play, that it using imagination and role playing. Children use objects or role that represents some objects such as babysitting. They are learning about the role of the future and how to solve problems. They also appreciate moral and cultural values.
Games are influential teaching tools. It’s been long understood that young children learn a lot through play, whether they are playing with blocks or picture books or even hide and seek. The learning doesn’t stop as we get older. Teens and even full-grown adults can learn while playing games. This is especially true with computer games.
Last time, play was believed to the opposite of education. It was just a diversion kids engaged in to burn energy. But in the early 20th century, scholars began challenging these notions. Chief among them was Jean Piaget, a Swiss philosopher known for his work studying children, who pioneered an educational theory that people build knowledge and meaning from their experiences.
Focusing on very young children, Piaget found that the way children play evolves as they grow older, and each stage of its development corresponds with stages in the child’s intellectual development. For instance, very young children are master of their own bodies and physical objects, and when they play they repeat the same movements over and over, such as banging blocks against a table. After that stage, they move toward more cognitive levels, tackling language and concepts. As such, their playing becomes more imaginative. In this approach, play has taken a more prominent place, because it is natural behaviour for the young.
Three-dimensional (3D) shapes exist all around us, from a water bottle's cylindrical shape to the spherical shape of a basketball. Mathematically, humans study 3D shapes by measuring the length, width and height of each shape. Learning about 3D shapes, from the most common basic shapes (spheres, cubes, cylinders, cones and pyramids) to complex objects containing a mix of basic shapes, can help learners at any age level understand the importance of geometry in our lives. A square is rhombus as well as a rectangle. Therefore, a square is a shape with four congruent sides (the rhombus components) and four 90° angles.
Games typically have an end goal: winning. This prize at the end keeps students interested, and it motivates them to keep playing until they get that prize. Much of education is trial and error. Like the old saying goes: practice makes perfect. These inevitable small failures along the way can be discouraging for students. This can be especially true in a classroom setting, where the student might get embarrassed for getting a wrong answer, or receive a low mark on a test. But with games, losing is just part of the fun. It’s the challenge. It’s what makes it interesting.
First lesson plan
Theme;Measuring Water.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the lesson, students are able to:
- Add and subtract units of volume in liquid
Preparation: Teacher prepares 5 pails of different colour waters for students’ usages
Equipment
- Worksheet
- A jug
- 5 different Buncho water colours
- Stick to mix
- Plastic cups to measure
- Water
You are the school mural artist and you want to draw and paint a mural on the school’s walls. You have to mix paints with water so they look like the colour scheme. You are given paints, red, green, blue, black and each colour has to be mixed with water to dilute it. You must add water to reach the colour scheme.
Procedures
- Students are gathered into groups of four.
- They are given the equipment and the worksheet.
- They put a cup of a Buncho colour into a transparent glass jug and they mix the paint with a cup of water.
- They look at the colour scheme in the worksheet, and they put one more cup of water to dilute the paint.
- They record how many cups of water they have added and stop when they have reached the colour scheme.
- They find the total liquid in the jug, by doing addition, the amount of cup for both paint and water.
| Example: How to reach the colour scheme on the right.
| Colour scheme  |
Second Lesson plan
Theme/Learning Area: Naming Shapes
Learning Outcomes: At the end of the lesson, students are able to
1. Describe and classifying two and three dimensional shapes
2. Building two and three dimensional shapes
3. Measure and record measurement of lengths in non- standard and standard unit.
4. Perform arithmetic operations involving addition.
5. Compare various measurements of lengths directly
Materials:
- The math worksheets
- 3 prisms , a triangle, a square and a rectangle.
- A measuring beaker
- a pail of water
- plastic gloves or clothes.
- A ruler
Activities:
- The class is divided into groups of 4.
- They are given a prism and they answer questions based on the prism they have. (refer attachment), For example, how many faces, virtues and edges does a square has?
- They measure the length of 2 prism’s edges using a ruler.
- When they have fulfilled the task, they measure the volume of the prisms
- They fill the prisms with water and the water is poured into a measuring beaker.
- They write down the measurement using standard units, millilitres (ml) and litres (l)
Experience
Students’ experience includes their ability to manipulate paints as the learning tool because they seldom get the chance to play with paints, only in Arts classes. They use their vision to look at the colour of the water in the jug, and not the water level, because they are concentrating on the colour, and not the volume of the water. The more water they pour into the jug, the lesser the colour. In this part, they must have steady hands and they must be careful, and this makes them careful, Maths teaches them to physically be careful with what they do. They also have a new knowledge on how to mix paint with water, and this skill can be applied when they want to mix paint for a mural. When comparing the experience, their primary goal is to see whether the colour matches with the colour scheme and they are not aware that the main goal is about measuring volume of water. They also experience a new concept where previously the students are given the description about a prism, and they name what is the prism, but in this lesson plan, they are given a prism and they define it, be it triangle, rectangle and square.
In the second lesson plan, they use the ruler to measure the sides of the prisms. The sides that they must measure is marked so it is easy for them to measure. They learn how to read the ruler and how to position the item to be measured, that is they lie it on the desk and put the ruler beside it so they touch each other. They look at the line showing the number 0 on the ruler and then they look what is the ruler’s measurement. Measuring jug using ruler is a new experience for them, they guess what is the volume of the jug, which is highr ? Is it the jug or the prisms ? It shows that they cannot measure the volume unless one way is to put water into the jug and pour it into the triangle, and if there is balance, then the jug has a bigger capacity.
Conclusion
Students need to be patient in mixing the paints together and watch carefully the colour change. The cups are used to represent one litre of water. Normally students are not allowed to play with colours, being afraid that they will smear the place with colours. Here, they use their skills to match the colour scheme given. They only need to dilute the paint so it reaches the intended colour level. What they need to add first is one of the elements, that is paint or water. Either they add water to paint, or add paint to water will produce the equal result. They need to follow which paint to put into the jug first. The addition of number consist of only between 2 one digit numbers, that is the volume of liquid with Buncho paint.
As for the lesson, I do student-centered learning where every minute is filled with the students’ participation in the activities.
Both lessons emphasizes skills in measuring the paint volume, and needs the students to measure how much is there water using a 1 litre bottle. It does not matter whether they have got the specific colour that matches the colour scheme, as long as the pour water into the paint to dilute it, then they will have to calculate the liquid volume.
Lesson Plan 1/ Sample of attachment/Questions of prisms.
| SEKOLAH KEBANGSAAN AIR BARUK, JASIN MELAKA
Describe the triangle 1) How many faces does a triangle has ? 2) How many bases does a triangle has ? 3) How many vertices does a triangle has ? 4) How many edges does a triangle has ? 5) What are the shape of my faces ? |
Lesson plan 1/ Attachment/ How to measure a side using a ruler.
|
Lesson plan 1/Attachment/ How to do a standard addition method.
| Example: Arrange the numbers so they form the format: A cm B cm + ==== ==== 4 cm 3cm + ===== ===== |
In the first lesson, the students only use the jug, and then in the second part, it shows them the importance to measure correctly using the beaker.
They need to be careful , they must weigh the container first, we do not want them to include the container’s weight with the liquid inside.
Here, they experience knowing water has volume and mass as well, they are measured in litres and grams respectively.
 SEKOLAH KEBANGSAAN AIR BARUK, JASIN MELAKA Worksheet Teacher’s name:_______________________________________________ Team name:
|
Attachments for teachers:
Colour mixing tips
An artist could spend a lifetime exploring colour and the results of colour mixing, there are just so many possibilities and results. Colour mixing is something beginners often shy away from. Don’t, rather learn the few fundamentals, embrace the challenge and get mixing. At worst you’ll produce mud colours; if you don’t want to waste the paint by throwing it away, use it with some white to do a tonal exercise, or underpainting. Here are some tips to help you with colour mixing
Colour Mixing Tip No 1: Add Dark to Light
It takes only a little of a dark colour to change a light colour, but it takes considerably more of a light colour to change a dark one. So, for example, always add blue to white to darken it, rather than trying to lighten the blue by adding white.
Colour Mixing Tip No 2: Add Opaque to Transparent
The same applies when mixing an opaque colour and a transparent one. Add a little of the opaque colour to the transparent one, rather than the other way round. The opaque colour has a far greater strength or influence than a transparent colour.
Colour Mixing Tip No 3: Stick to Single Pigments
For the brightest, most intense results, check that the two colours you are mixing are each made from one pigment only, so you’re mixing only two pigments. Artist’s quality paints normally list the pigment(s) in a colour on the tube's label.
Colour Mixing Tip No 4: Mixing the Perfect Browns and Greys
Mix ‘ideal’ browns and grays that harmonize with a painting by creating them from complementary colours (red/green; yellow/purple; blue/orange) in the palette you’ve used in that painting, rather than colours you haven’t used. Varying the proportions of each colour will create quite a range.
Colour Mixing Tip No 5: Don’t Overmix
If, when you mix two colours together on a palette, you don’t mix and mix until they’re totally, utterly, definitely combined, but stop a little bit beforehand, you get a far more interesting result when you put the mixed colour down on paper or canvas. The result is a colour that’s intriguing, varies slightly across the area you’ve applied it, not flat and consistent.
No of words: 2548
References:
- Chong Liep kiong et all.(2007). HBMT2203 Teaching Mathematics in Year Three. Kuala Lumpur. Open Universiti Malaysia.
- Stiggins, R. (2004). New assessment beliefs for a new school mission. Phi Delta Kappan, 86(1), 22–27. Retrieved September 14, 2005 , from http://www.edustat.com/uploadedFiles/Stiggins_New%20Assessment%20Beliefs%20for%20a%20New%20School%20Mission.pdf
- Suydam, M. N. (1990). Curriculum and evaluation standards for mathematics education (ERIC/SMEAC Mathematics Education Digest No. 1). ERIC Digest. Columbus, OH: ERIC Clearinghouse for Science Mathematics and Environmental Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED319630
- U.S. Department of Education. (2004). No Child Left Behind: A toolkit for teachers . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved September 14, 2005, from http://www.ed.gov/teachers/nclbguide/toolkittoc.html
- Wu, H. (2001). The 1997 mathematics standards war in California. Berkeley, CA: University of California–Berkeley. Retrieved September 14, 2005, from http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Standards3.pdf
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