Ro Sham Bingo !!!

Hi Everyone,

Recently I posted a video made with the help from two enthusiastic teachers from the school I'm currently working at.

It was a counting game called 'Ro Sham Bo', a game from Korea that I have modified to be used in maths and also Phys Ed!!

Basically, it is 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'.

Since lockdown has started, many of these clips have been used by our students at home.

Earlier this week a fellow teacher sent me an email that contained a clip that a family at home had made of their kids playing 'Ro Sham Bo' (showing their hands only).

While I was excited to see them using the games we are providing for them, what I was most pleased to see was how they adapted the game to challenge themselves further.

Not only were they adding the numbers, they included a new way of using the numbers that they were generating.

When they put their fingers out, instead of adding them, they multiplied them.

For example, Child 1 put out 6 fingers, Child 2 put out 4 fingers.

They took it in turns to say the answer, then took in turns to call out the answer first.

This can be modified to using one hand each at first, then using two hands each.

It was great modification to see!!

And yet another modification!

Then yesterday I was supervising a group of F-2 children who were at school, and we decided to look at ways of adding modifications to 'Ro Sham Bo'.

We had discussed about the range of numbers that can be made using two hands each, and agreed that the range was 0-20

It was then decided that each of us would draw up a 3 x 3 array and create a Bingo chart, and put in any of the numbers 0-20 in it.

The question was raised "Can we use the same number more than once?" , and rather than leaving the answer up to me, I let them decide it among themselves when they went off to play with each other.

Then, to top it off, they decided to call it 'Ro Sham Bingo'!!

Everything that I hoped to achieve happened in this session. They came up with changes, they were motivated to play, they owned the changes (instead of the teacher) and afterwards were eager to discuss and share how they thought the game went.

Giving the game a new name was also a big hit with them too!!

So, in this next clip you will see the original version, and then the changes made by the group I worked with.

I hope you like it, and are motivated to generate more changes, not just to this game, but all other activities that the kids are trying out.