My class have been playing this “Spot on” addition game for almost a fortnight now. They are really enjoying it and practicing lots of maths skills in the process. Love it!!!!
Some of the skills that this games encourages includes: an awareness of 10, improved addition and “mental maths”, ”subitising” and an awareness of “part-part-whole” relationships.
What you need to play “Spot on”:
All you need is a dice, 10 “spots” or counters and a 10 frame. You can download a free 10 frame here.
How to play “Spot on”:
Child 1 rolls the dice and places that amount of “spots” on his/her card.
All other children then have their first turn and place the relevant number of spots on their board.
Before children roll the dice for a second time they must identify “how many more” spots are needed to fill their board.
( See the example below: I rolled 6 and need 4 more to be “spot on”).
You can only win the game by throwing the exact number needed to fill your board. This may mean throwing the dice and placing no “spots” on the board. If I rolled a 5 below I would place no counters on my board. I need exactly 4 to be “spot on”
When you call get the exact number need then you fill the board and shout “spot on!”
Why we have been playing “Spot on”:
For the first few days I circulated and prompted maths talk.
- How many more do you need for “spot on”?
- Can you get that many with one more roll of the dice? Why/why not?
- How many are on your board now? What did you just roll? Make a number sentence with those numbers eg. 5 and 4 more makes 9. I need one more for “spot on”.
Now my pupils naturally talk to each other about their 10 frame and how many more is needed, who have less than them, what their number sentence is.
I encourage my pupils to “subitise” when playing the game. Subitising is recognising a collection (of objects, pictures, dots on dominoes etc) without counting, simply by looking. In this case, the empty frames on their 10 frame may create a pattern that they can visually recognise.
I also encourage pupils to “count on” and use “mental maths strategies“. They know that each row contains 5 frames and that there are 10 frames in total, 2 rows for 5. They can use this information to count on. eg if they see 3 spots in the first row: 2 blanks and 5 more in the bottom row:
They should be create number sentence like these below rather than actually “counting” the frames by touching them:
- 2 and 5 more makes 7
To consolidate “part-part-whole knowledge” by establishing the ability to see and recognise a number in terms of its parts, eg see 10 in terms of :
- 7 and 3 more would make 10
- or 7 being 3 less than 10
I hope that you all have lots of fun playing this game. There are lots of versions of this floating around the internet. Have any of you play it already?
Have fun,
Miss Mernagh 
