The Story of Monopoly: How Charles Stole Lizzie’s Idea and Made His Fortune (LS-RS-507)
With this learning scenario, created by Natalija Budinski, a Serbian mathematics teacher, students learn about the history of Monopoly, popular board game, and then they create their own board game, based on the rules of Monopoly. The scenario is based on project-based learning and learning through playing concepts. It makes learning mathematics a fun activity. This learning scenario is designed for 13-year-old students.
Let’s create Mathopoly!
In order to make our maths lessons more interesting, we have decided to add some games and playful activities to the learning process. The starting point was the board game Monopoly. It inspired us to adjust this story to the mathematical curriculum of seventh grade and make our own Mathopoly – a board game based on the idea of Monopoly rules but adjusted to mathematical content.
We created our Mathopoly, using some instruction materials found on the Internet. Activities were connected to the lessons related to linear equations and students created some linear equations for the purpose of the game.
The power of teamwork
As homework, students learned about Monopoly and its history on the Europeana website. They prepared posters and presented their findings in pairs. After this, they were set to create Mathopoly as a team.
Different teams co-operated creating the Mathopoly game: one team prepared questions, another – the board and the third one would present the results of their work at the science fair.
Questions in the game were related to equations and inequalities, but there were also questions from geometry, such as: “What is the area of a circle when the radius is 4cm?” Therefore, to play the game participants will need to know the basics of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic.
Students playing Mathopoly they created. You can see the different tasks on the board game.Learning outcomes
In this Learning Scenario students will learn:
- The rules of the Monopoly game.
- Apply their mathematical knowledge to create a boardgame Mathopoly.
- Present the game at the science fair.
- Express their creativity through art.
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Public Domain: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by Brian0918 Wikimedia Commons.
