Teacher to Teacher: Improving Students Mathematical Communication and Connections Using the Classic Game of “Telephone”

Abstract

Remember playing the game of “Telephone” as a child? Someone whispered a statement to the person next to him or her, who then whispered to the next person in line. As each person passed the message on, everyone eagerly waited to see how it was altered and who was guilty of changing it. Our activity, “equation telephone,” was inspired by this game. Each pair or group of students is given an equation and develops a story to fit the equation. The story is passed to the next group, which, in turn, must create an equation to fit the story—not solve it, just write it. That equation is passed to the next group, which has to write another story, and so on, until the equation returns to the original group. We found that this activity greatly improved our students' ability to interpret written information and recognize equivalent forms of an equation. The following sections share the details of this activity, along with examples of student responses.