Walk The Plank

Last week on Wednesday morning the weather was ideal for the 81 Maths class to do the Walk the Plank lesson outdoors on the painted grids in the playground courtyard.

Before we went out, we split into 3 groups of pirates. The scenario was explained that each group had their own pirate ship sailing to the Caribbean and had already made a few of the crew walk the plank for breaking the ships rules and were thus running out of sailors. The captain had decided that for any future plank walking there would be an even chance of survival to help conserve crew numbers.

We then moved outside where each group drew a Boat at the right-hand end of their grid and Sharks at the left-hand end.

The student walking the plank would begin on the middle square marked with M, the captain would roll a cubic die with 3 Ss and 3 Bs on it. The person on the plank then faced either the boat (B) or the sharks (S). Next the ship’s bosun rolled a second die marked with F1, F2, F3 and B1, B2, B3 the person on the plank then walked forward (F) or back (B) the number of squares indicated. i.e. B3 is back 3 places.

Fate then played a part so that after some back and forth, either the plank walker was eaten by sharks or safely pardoned back on the boat. Everyone had multiple turns each, sharing the fun with some students talking like pirates!

Once back inside we completed a worksheet relating the B / S and forward F / B (a certain amount) to Directed Numbers – the addition and subtraction of Integers.

Soon we transitioned to calculating equations such as: -2 – (-3) =