DESIGNING BOARD-GAMES FOR DEVELOPING PRE-SERVICE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’ MENTAL CALCULATION SKILLS

Abstract

Nowadays in the modern educational view the student should be an active participant of the learning process, and learning should be fun. Board-games have the potential to transform the learning from an activity seen as work to an activity seen as playing. Mental calculation skills are important not only for those working with numbers, but also in the everyday life. Developing mental calculation skills need a lot of practice, which can be boring. Board-games could help to make this practice fun. In this paper we focus on designing board-games for developing mental calculation skills. Three board-games designed by the author for pre-service preschool and primary school teachers for the Mathematics course they have in their second year of study are presented. But these games can be also used from primary school level to high-school level just changing the difficulty of the calculations involved. The games were tested and evaluated by the students participated in the course. Based on the evaluations some aspects related with designing mathematical games are discussed.