A Reasonably Pleasant Day--With Yahtzee!

I didn't have a prep period today--three 2-hr classes!

Usually such days are murder.  No one, not even a math teacher, likes being in a math class for 2 solid hours.  But today I was able to take a little of the edge off.

I taught some new material.  We took a brief recess.  And then I taught my students to play Yahtzee.

Huh?  Wha?  You want to know where Yahtzee is in the Common Core math standards?  I'll admit that it's not explicitly called out, but there are plenty of standards relating to probability.  And that's how I used Yahtzee.

It used to be fairly common on probability tests to ask questions related to the probability of drawing such-and-such a card from a deck, or the probability of getting this card followed by that card if you don't replace the first card, etc.  The problem is that so many of today's young people don't know what constitutes a deck of cards!  What used to be common knowledge isn't so common anymore.  So rather than continue to ask questions about a deck of cards, I taught my students how to play Yahtzee and in the process of doing so, asked probability questions. 

For example, I might have rolled 2 3's, 2 4's, and a 5 on my first roll.  What's the probability of getting a full house?  If I roll a 2-2-3-4-5 on the first roll, what's the probability of getting a large straight?  (BTW, both of those answers are the same.)  If I get a 1-2-3-4-6 on the first roll, what's the probability of getting a large straight?

I admit that a large reason for playing this was for fun, and make no mistake, there was lots of hooting and hollering and flexing when great things happened!  Still, though, I was able to make the lesson almost as much about math as it was about having fun. 

It was much more enjoyable, and much easier, to teach Yahtzee than to teach any number of card games (along with their associated probabilities).  And when I ask questions about probabilities in Yahtzee on the test, I won't have to explain what I mean by "large straight" or "full house", etc.

Several of my students said they were going to download Yahtzee onto their phones :-)