Playing Cards in School Continued

You can use cards for pretty much any lesson involving categories. They are great for unit reviews. It just takes a little bit of prep time. For example: Label cards with terms from a government unit (amendments, presidents, branches of government, court cases, etc.) you can then use this deck to play Go Fish. "Do you have a civil rights amendment?" "Do you have a Supreme Court Justice?" etc. You can also use the cards for a Poker Style game Straight = 5 amendments in a row, Full House = 2 Supreme Court Justices & 3 Presidents, etc. Or you can make a few decks and have students race in groups to see who can group the cards properly first (put all presidents together, all local representatives, all justices, all civil rights activists)

These same ideas can be used with any subject. I find that some decks have a plastic coating on it which is washable. I often use a washable marker to label the cards with the new terms and wipe it off with a damp cloth before i label it for the next unit.

Hopefully this will get the ball rolling for you and open the door o a bunch of other ideas for how you can use cards in any classroom. I know my students perk up anytime I bring in a card game. Try it, let me know how it goes.

Playing Cards in School

I would like to encourage every teacher to invest in a deck or two of cards. I find playing cards to be very cheep yet incredibly useful in the classroom. They can also be used effectively for any subject if you know how to get creative.

Math

• Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication War - (you can do division, but it is harder due to decimals)(also, I like to call it peace not war, but that's just me) Each player throws down two cards instead of one and the winner is based off of the result of their two cards. (ex. if you are doing multiplication and person A has 2 and 6 (total of 12) and person B has 10 and 5 (total of 50) then person B wins) I usually have them do the person with the lowest total wins when doing subtraction
  
• Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication Snap - (same division warning) All players throw down one card at the same time, the first person to correctly apply the chosen action (add, subtract, multiply) wins all of the cards. This can be done with several players, however I do not recommend more than 4. The game is won by getting the whole deck
• 5 Card Opps - Each player gets 5 cards. they then have a set time (based on your students skill level) to come up with as many problems and their solutions with those cards. They must write down the problems using proper Order of Operations (PEMDAS) The winner is the person with the most correct problems at the end of the time. (ex. cards: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5: 1+2+3+4+5=15, (1+3)/4+2-5 = -2, and so on.)

I'll go into the details of how to use cards in other subjects next time and more math uses in the future as well.