Numeracy Game: "50 and out"

My second numeracy game of the year for the Peer Numeracy roll call group was based on an idea I found on the internet when googling around. Naturally, I can't find it again. But it was called "50 and out" or something very similar.

Basically, everyone stands in a circle (I've found that a group of 5-10 is good) and they go around the circle saying the next number in the sequence. So for the basic game, they count up in fives. There is a target number, in this case 50. The person who says 50 has to sit down, then the others start back at 5 and you continue until only one person is standing.

There's no strategy to this game, but it leads neatly on to playing variations on "21". There, each person can choose whether to say 1, 2, or 3 numbers in the sequence to try not to get out.

For my numeracy roll call we are focusing on counting on and back by 10s, so we had variations like:

• Start at 10, go up by 10s, 100 is out
• Start at 200, go down by 10s, 100 is out
• Start at 37, go up by 10s, 157 is out
• Start at 182, go down by 10s, 62 is out

We've played for a week now and covered heaps of variations of counting by 10s off the decade, and they've also tried counting by 2s and by 5s.

With another Maths class, we used it more for times tables, up to the 12s. This was also a great opportunity to satisfy their desire to go outside on a nice day! We made two circles on the netball courts and they happily played for about half a lesson. They had a go at the variation with strategy, which I'll try with the roll call group tomorrow!