Go Fish
Age group
- Early Years (Age 3 to 6)
- Primary (Age 6 to 9)
Curriculum Goal
Kindergarten: Demonstrating Literacy and Mathematics Behaviour
Demonstrate an understanding of numbers, using concrete materials to explore and investigate counting, quantity, and number relationships.
Primary: Number Sense
Compose, decompose and compare whole numbers up to and including 50, using a variety of tools and strategies, in various contexts.
Related Links
Context
- Two to four students sit together on the carpet or at a desk.
- Primary students should have prior experience with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing under 50.
Materials
One standard 52-card deck with jokers
Lesson
- The teacher or group select a target number and deals five cards to each player.
- Early years students may want to target a number that is 12 or lower.
- Primary students may want to target a number upwards of 10 to 50.
- Players identify and place any pairs that can reach the target number.
- Early years students may want to attempt addition.
- Primary students may use all arithmetic operations (addition, substruction, multiplication, division).
- Players take turns asking others for specific cards that will help them create more pairs with their remaining cards.
- If the asked player doesn’t have the card, they say “go fish”, prompting the asker to draw from the deck.
- Players replenish their hand with five new cards once they run out.
- The game continues until the deck is exhausted.
- The player with the most pairs wins.
Look Fors
- What operation do students use to combine the cards and reach the target number?
- What strategies students use to determine which card to ask for?
Related Lessons
Dice Toss
Students engage in a simple probability experiment that requires dice and mental math strategies.
