Climber Probability Game

Help the climber ascend the mountain by clicking on the color you think the spinner will land on. Race against classmates and see who gets there first. Teachers trust Toy Theater to provide safe & effective educational games for elementary school classrooms. Free to play, priceless for learning.

Lesson Plan Idea

Title of Lesson

 Probability Race to the Top

Subject

Data Management and Probability

Grades

One through Six

Learning Objectives

Students will actively explore probability and be able to describe the probability of an event occurring.

Materials/Resources

Computers or tablets for each child directed to http://toytheater.com/climber/.

Instructional Strategies

Introduction/Warm Up (5 minutes)

Tell students that you are going to play a game about probability. On your cue they should all start to play. Tell them to stop as soon as the first person wins. Repeat this again without discussing it first.

Ask the students if anyone changed their strategies from the first game to the second. Ask them to explain what they did, starting with the students who did not win.

Guided Practice/Discussion (15 minutes)

Explain that even though the spins are random, on average the green is going to win more times than the other others because it takes up a larger proportion of the circle. However, sometimes the spinner will still land on blue or yellow.

Split the class into three groups and assign each group to always click one of blue, yellow, or green. Have the students play the game again but this time only clicking on the color they were assigned. Tell them to raise their hand when they win, and let the game keep going until all the students have completed the game (or until you get tired of waiting for the yellows!)

Extend/Differentiation

Enrichment: Ask students to determine the fractions that each color represents. Discuss fractions as a means of predicting probabilities.

Review and Closing (5 minutes)

• Ask student to reflect on how they felt while playing the game. Did they want to pick yellow when they weren’t winning? What made them want to pick a color that had less chance of being picked?
• Ask students to think about how this might apply to other situations in life like playing the lottery. Might they feel differently if the sizes of the colors were different?