Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Sushi Monster

This game, Sushi Monster, is put out by Scholastic, the same group that puts out the books for book fairs, weekly reader magazines and assessment testing.  As I stated yesterday, I am looking for apps that allow my students to practice their multiplication facts.  The students who arrive in my 9th grade Pre-Algebra class do not usually know their multiplication facts and rather than lament them not knowing the facts, I want to find games to help them learn.

So I found this app.  It offers practice for both addition and multiplication facts so is usable by many grades from early elementary on up.  When a student begins, they must start at level one and complete a number of problems correctly before they move up to the next level.

I started level one for multiplication which is designed to practice multiplication facts up to 12 times 12.  Once you move up to level two, you end up moving to larger numbers such as 300 and 900.   I jplayed with this long enough to move up to the second level because I wanted to know what it took.
The game starts with two numbers in the upper left hand corner so you know your target numbers.  Four factors in the form of sushi are served on the outer ring around the monster.  The player selects the two factors that make the target number.  If a student is not sure, they can skip and move on and the program will put that number in at the end.

If the student selects the wrong factors, nothing happens so the student has to go back and rethink their answer.  Once they get the right factors, the monster eats the sushi and you move on to the next set of problems.  As the student progresses through the level, the number of problems increases from 2 to 5 each round and so does the number of factors.  The number of factors will always equal the number of problems.

Over all, I plan to have use this app in my Pre-Algebra class and have students work on it regularly.  I want them to increase their knowledge of multiplication facts so it becomes second nature.