Followup Post: SET

This one I enjoyed and it was surprisingly successful. I've had numerous occasions now where I've asked a kid to compare/contrast something and he/she has given me a blank look. Me or another student will saying, "You know, like in SET" and it'll click and they'll get going.

I was just looking for some sort of anchor and I got it. Also, a bunch of the kids really liked the game.

Notes for next time:

1. They caught on pretty quick to the simpler version. I went home and made the full deck (keynote and pdf). The full deck was too hard for a few of the kids but most of them had more fun with it.
   
2. I explained the rules but nobody got it. Like nobody. Then I showed a few "This is a SET" "This is not a SET" examples and they caught on pretty quick. The final example was a group of 12 cards on the screen and we found various SETs as a class. Easily creating sample slides was one of the nice things about having done it in Keynote.
   
3. It turns out that the right margin is too big so the cards are uneven when printed. However, my cutting skills are actually the limiting factor so it didn't matter in the end.
   
4. If you make multiple card sets, just scribble a different color crayon or marker on the back of each group. You'll find stray cards on the ground or mixed in and matching the color is much easier than numbering or having to count up the cards.
   
5. I didn't get a chance to take up Sue Vanhattum's idea of generating their own cards, but put that one on the wishlist.
   

Other stuff that might interest you:

The blogger known as Sophie Germain uses the SET daily puzzle with her math kids at the end of class. She says they really dig it.

Bree also has an interesting post about looking at solved deductive puzzles and using those to figure out the rules of the game.¹ SET can definitely be introduced in this manner.






1: This is a good time to point you towards a fun, and totally free, game called Zendo.