| Dice are easy to come by and make fun mental routines. If you don't
already have dice they are easy to make, either by using wooden blocks
or by using templates such as:
As you can see, dice can be regular, that is marked with dots
from one to six on each face such that every opposite pair of sides
totals seven or they can be especially tailored to suit the needs of
your learners. For instance dice can be tailored as follows:
- One regular dice teamed with one dice marked with only 1s, 2s and
3s (encourages fluency with count on 1, 2, and 3 facts)
- One dice with numerals 1-6 teamed with a dot dice (to encourage
counting on rather than counting all of the dots)
- Two dice each marked with 1-4 dots with an extra 1 and 2 on the
remaining faces encourages use of doubles as well as count on facts)
- Two dice marked with 1-5 and with an extra 4 on one dice and an
extra 3 on the other (to encourage use of doubles, near doubles and
rainbow facts)
- Two regular dice (to encourage use of a full range of strategies)
- One dice marked with dots 1 to 6 and the other with numerals from
7-10 with an extra 4 and 5 on the other faces (to encourage the full
range of strategies and push beyond 10.
- One dice marked with only 9s and 10s and one regular dice (to
encourage adding onto tens facts)
- Two dice each marked with even numbers of dots, 2-6
(encourages the use of skip counting by twos).
There are other variations that you might think of to suit the needs
of your particular learners. Three or more dice can be used at one time
to extend number facts and strategies and again they can be planned in
series as above to develop particular strategies and to increase the
complexity of the routines as the children increase in confidence.
Working with Dice
Suppose that you have prepared a set of dice dot cards (see Level 1:
Activity Sheet 1) for each child. Rather than select a particular child
to call out an answer or having lots of children calling out, ask the
children to use the cards to show the answers to your questions.
This has many benefits for everyone. Firstly you can see that all
children are participating and you can also see their answers. Secondly
the children will all participate because they know that you can see
them. Other benefits for the children are that they:
- see other's solutions and can be reassured that they have selected
the 'correct' card-great for the early stages when some children do
not want to take a risk,
- see a variety of ways of showing the same answer (e.g., for 2 + 3,
they might see 5 in dot form, as a numeral or as a numeral 3 and 2
dots to signify the turnaround and or the count on 2 fact),
- begin to realise that there may be more than one answer to an open
question and that they are all equally valid,
- see a wide range of strategies, some possibly more
sophisticated than the one that they used and which they can then
try by themselves next time,
- learn to defend their own answers and ideas rather than simply
change their answer if they see a different one.
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