Easy Card Games to Build Math Confidence

You don’t have to be quick at arithmetic to be good at math … but it certainly helps. Having arithmetic fact fluency frees extra brain space so students can focus more on the grade level content in class (“if 7 t-shirts cost $56, how much would 13 shirts cost?”) than trying to remember what is 56 divided by 7.

We are also in a golden age of board games - Settlers of Catan, Taco Cat Pizza, Exploding Kittens, Yeti Spaghetti - so there’s never been a cooler time to stay home and bust out some cards (or so I tell myself!). If you’re trying to build your math confidence or your student’s, here are some options that keep your Amazon cart light. All they require is a deck of cards and access to the rules, which can be found by calling your great uncle or making a quick google search!

Here are a couple of classic card games that tackle a number of math fluency skills:

• Ninety-Nine (ages 8+; number of players 2-8; skill: addition/subtraction within 100)

This game is an absolute classic in my family, but if you ever play with my 96-year-old grandmother, she is ruthless. Players have to keep a running total as each card “adds” until you get to 99 (but not over, or you lose!). There are some trick cards that keep things interesting. This game can be quick (over in as little as 10 minutes) and gives players a chance to practice mental addition, as well as patience, turn-taking, and some strategy. The game does use poker chips to track how often someone has lost, but they can easily be replaced with objects such as paper clips, erasers, or the gross cereal that’s left after you’ve eaten all the lucky charms marshmallows. Check it out!

• War (ages 3+; number of players 2-4; skill: adaptable!)

What I love about the card game of war is that it doesn’t require congressional funding to implement and that it can be adapted based on skill level. Instead of “largest number wins the hand” you can have players race to shout out the sum of the two flipped cards. Have a 3rd+ grader? Multiply the cards that are flipped, whoever says the product first keeps the hand. Alternatively, have them shout out the greatest common factor instead! Have a 6th+ grader? Make the red cards negative and the black positive, greater number wins, of course! Have a 7th+ grader? Now you can do sums or products but with negatives!

• Cribbage (ages 10+, number of players 2 or 4; skill: summing across 10).

I lied to you. Cribbage is not an easy card game, but once you get the hang of it, cribbage is “easy” to love! See? It counts!  It’s typically played with a peg board to keep score, but pencil and paper work fine, and provide greater addition practice. The key skill in this game is figuring out ways to score points through combinations, the easiest being finding cards in your hand or in the deal that can sum to 15. This may sound childish for a 10+ year old, but it’s hard work, and helps practice adding across 10. For example, what’s 7 + 8 go! One quick way to do this is to know 8 + 8 = 16, so since 7 is one less than 8, the sum is 15. Another way is to break 8 into 3 and 5, then combine the 3 to 7 to make 10, then add the extra 5 to total 15. As a 7th grade teacher, I have plenty of strong students who haven’t practiced mental addition since they “had to” in the younger grades, and it shows. Keep those muscles strong!

What card games am I missing that allow you to play with math? Find some family favorites that can be adapted or played as is to keep arithmetic fluency strong!

Ms. Coe

Top 5 Moments of the Expeditionary Learning National Conference 2023

This November, I was lucky enough to be accepted as a presenter at the EL Education National Conference in Denver, Colorado! Amazing educators – including teachers, school and district administrators, instructional leaders, school board members, and curriculum specialists – came together to learn from one another about best practices to prepare students to contribute to a better world and achieve more than they thought possible.

Here are my Top 5 Moments of this transformational experience:

#5

Elena Aguilar’s keynote address. It was so inspiring to hear from educator Elena Aguilar on cultivating resilience to build equitable schools!

#4

Student ambassadors and presenters. Conference emcees were all students from EL Education schools – what an experience to hear from these youth leaders in their own voices.

#3

Hands-on tools to implement right away! From ideas for Expeditions and authentic final products, to ways to use AI in the classroom, to collaborative problem solving and consultancy, I walked away with tangible tools to implement immediately.

#2

Learning from experts in the field – like our very own Ms. Fiske and Ms. Abbey! EL Education and Detroit Prep share the belief that teachers and school team members are the experts on how to build equitable, excellent schools. I am in awe of the experiences and ideas shared.

#1

Connecting and collaborating with brilliant and passionate educator friends from around the world! Connecting and reconnecting with the EL Education community and network year after year brings me so much joy, resilience, learning, sense of belonging, and sense of possibility knowing that we are in this work together. Having the mental and emotional space to learn together is a true gift and privilege – I’m so grateful for this opportunity.

Partners in Literacy

At Detroit Prep, we have an incredible team of interventionists who support every learner in and outside of the classroom to meet their reading and math growth goals! Ms. Kira, Ms. Gloria, Ms. Lindsay, Ms. Johari, and Ms. Alissa work urgently and tirelessly to ensure that every student is growing every day through small group and one on one instruction.

This year, you may have also seen a few new faces working with our students on everything from letters and sounds to phonemic awareness – the fabulous Ms. Valorie and Ms. Helena! 

Ms. Valorie and Ms. Helena are partners from Michigan Education Corps who worked with students in first through third grade to supplement and accelerate classroom learning and intervention. We are so lucky and thankful to partner with the Michigan Education Corps (MEC) through a generous grant from the Skillman Foundation to have one on one reading supports for students within the school day. Ms. Valorie and Ms. Helena also go above and beyond, working with students during their lunch breaks, and staying late on Fridays to join Community Crew!

Here are some of our students’ favorite activities to work on with Ms. Valorie and Ms. Helena in their sessions, that you can try at home with your learners!

Phonemic Awareness: Knowing that oral language is made of individual sounds and parts of words.

• Blending - Say a word out loud and use chips, cubes, or pieces of paper as a visual model for each sound. Then, ask your child to blend the sounds orally to make the word! 

• Segmenting - Say a word out loud and ask your child to break it down into its syllables.

Phonics: Knowing letters and sounds, and being able to use these to decode words.

• Letter/Sound Games - Say a sound, and have your child point to it and name the letter. Then try the reverse - point to a letter, and have your child say the sound it makes!

• Word Blending - Write a list of simple words, or lay out some flash cards of simple words. Touch under each letter and ask your child to make the sound of that letter, then drag your finger under the letters and have your child read the word.

Fluency: Accurate, smooth, well-paced, and expressive reading of a text.

• Duet Reading - Have your child read a simple, decodable passage (like these!), then take turns reading every other word together, and finally have your child read the passage again independently.

• Newscaster - Practice reading with expression by asking your child to read a simple passage more than once, first to decode, and then with expression like a newscaster!

Allies for Radical Collaboration

At Detroit Prep, our mission is to provide a world-class, equitable education that will give a diverse group of students a foundation of academic excellence and character development. Our crew commits to making this vision a reality on a daily basis, and it’s something that requires constant learning and reflection on our practice! 

Last winter, I was fortunate to participate in Allies for Radical Collaboration - a fellowship program developed with Black Male Educators Alliance and Henry Ford Learning Institute for white-identifying Detroit educators who lead, love, and nurture Detroit students from diverse backgrounds. I was humbled to have the ongoing opportunity to develop and implement culturally responsive practices in our learning community within the fellowship, beyond the work we already do in our school community through our Equity Groups.

Through this six month cohort experience, I continued to explore how my personal identity impacts my interactions with students, our school team, and our broader community. We engaged in asset-based community field experiences, such as immersive learning within other schools across Detroit, conversations and panels with community partners, and building a network of allies and critical friends that will support each other and push each other’s thinking to uncover my own gaps and blind spots.

We also learned culturally responsive, community-building strategies to try in our schools with a focus on nurturing strong relationships between students and staff, staff and families, and our neighborhoods! Some of the most fun and engaging elements were a set of “cup games” that build connection and a sense of teamwork.

I’m grateful and excited to continue my own self-work and part two of the cohort experience this summer and fall so that I can contribute in our crew toward a restorative culture based in hope, healing, joy, and equitable learning environments.

Our Work is Permissionless || The Yass Prize

When I first learned about the Yass Prize, I was blown away by the intentional principles that guide the efforts to find, reward, celebrate and expand best-in-class education organizations:

• Sustainability - meaning your practice can be funded independently without continual philanthropy by utilizing public programs that fund the entity where students are learning, regardless of sector.

• Transformational with innovative new approaches that employ 21st century knowledge and technologies, changing the way students are educated and rich in content that is relevant and impactful across all communities.

• Outstanding, or demonstrably successful by every measure that matters. 

• Permissionless — meaning your work requires no permission and is free to exist and thrive without dependence on regulatory bodies whose rules are often at odds with parent demands and student needs.

Our school district has been named as semifinalists for the prestigious Yass Prize, which is considered the Pullitzer of education innovation!! We are utterly honored, grateful, and so excited to be seen and validated for what we have always known to be true. We think that we were made to win!

The STOP principles are beyond inspiring to me - and they are at the heart of everything we aspire to do in our work at Detroit Prep and Detroit Achievement Academy!

In my role as Head of School at Detroit Prep, this looks like supporting our district- and schoolwide efforts to create sustainable systems for our adult crew – from maximizing our daily schedule to include common prep time to allow for grade level collaboration, to working with our leadership teams to develop and sustain teacher leadership pipelines and opportunities, to working with our staff-led Sunshine Committee to plan monthly celebrations for our teammates - coming together for birthdays, holidays, and life milestones. It looks like viewing our transformational work along three dimensions of student achievement: culture & character, mastery of knowledge and skills, and high quality work in our student led conferences and celebrations of learning. It looks like our amazing teachers and Directors attaining outstanding academic and socio-emotional results - outpacing our city, county, state, and national comparison groups in academic outcomes like standardized test scores.

The principle that is top of mind for me right now, though, is permissionless – the ways our innovative model and support from our network team and school board allows us to employ a “whatever it takes” theory of action while working together to support and develop every student as a learner, leader, and world-changer. Our crew commits to holistically supporting each child, and this permissionless approach makes that truly and authentically possible.

It looks like Ms. Fiske, our Director of Upper School, revamping our Friday specials to be authentically elective, with students choosing clubs that align with their true passions and interests and our incredible Upper School and Specials teams sharing their own passions and interests - advanced art and music, school newspaper, French, GSA, yoga, graphic design, and advanced math - to show student’s what’s possible. It’s our wonderful school social workers, Ms. Briana and Ms. Aly, coordinating a Giving Tree during the winter holidays to ensure every family can celebrate with meaningful gifts, and a parent-organized Costume Closet so that every child has something special to wear for Halloween.

It’s our Operations and Student Support Team nurturing family groups called Groves, named for our six Habits of Character - where families and households are organized into smaller groups geographically, to create carpools, encourage resource sharing, and facilitate long term relationships. It’s our fabulous teachers like Ms. Rebecca, Ms. Johari, Mr. Terry, Ms. Munira, Ms. Gloria, and Ms. Abbey offering tutoring, coaching, and sponsoring after school activities outside of the school day. It’s Mr. Steffon leading a weekly boys group to teach essential life and communication skills.

The countless ways our school community goes beyond what’s often considered possible within and beyond the school day is seemingly endless, and embodies the permissionless way our team supports the whole child.

- Jen McMillan, Co-Founder & Head of School

Our Habit of Character Awards

One of the highest honors at Detroit Prep is to become a Light Leader. Light Leaders are selected by being nominated by any member of our Crew - students, staff, and families - for showing all of our Habits of Character, and being a steadfast and shining example of one! 

Because this honor is so special and rare, though, some students shared an idea that we should have MORE ways to recognize more students for showing our Habits of Character. This is how we came up with (drum roll please…) - our monthly Habit of Character awards!

Each month, our Primary, Elementary, and Upper School teams come together to nominate and select one student who is truly embodying each habit of character. A student is selected for each award, and Crew Leaders and Directors create a certificate to honor each student.

On the last Friday of the month, winners are announced during Community Crew and receive their certificate and acknowledgement from the community. Families are invited to attend if they are able. We are so proud of our learners, leaders, and world changers - and grateful for this way to celebrate more crew members who live our Habits of Character and make our community special!

September 2023 winners!

Another way we celebrate our crew is through our weekly Crew Awards. These awards allow us to showcase our Habits of Character as a team, and each Crew (classroom) works together to win every week! Our four awards are: Silver Seat, Golden Lunch Tray, Team Spirit, and All-Star Attendance!

Silver Seat: This is award goes to the floor with the cleanest restrooms where students are showing integrity while using the space. Winners get chosen to play our Community Crew game on Fridays.

Golden Lunch Tray/Cleanest Crew: This award is for the cleanest, most responsible and compassionate crew during lunch. Winners earn lunch coverage for teachers, choosing seats during lunch after five wins, and a pizza party after 10 wins!

Team Spirit: 100% of students in uniform means free dress on Friday!

All Star Attendance: Crews with the highest attendance percentage for the week earn an additional recess on Fridays with Ms. Jen (and an extra 30 minutes of prep for their teacher!)

These awards build a sense of pride in our community, engages us in friendly competition, and generates team spirit. We are CREW!

Our 2023 winners so far…