Group Learning Experience Planning Sheet:

Student Name: Jessica Edwards Course Code: ECS4070

Age Group: 4 to 5 years. Date: October 13th, 2017

Learning Experience: Math and Social Activity- Exploring Pokemon Cards
Programming Purpose:

Many of the students in the KF2 classroom have recently become interested in the
pokemon franchise. Most of the time the children like to role play as different pokemon
monsters and discuss the creatures strengths and weaknesses.One child even brought their
pokemon trading cards into the classroom from home, but unfortunately due to school rules
they couldnt be played with. These rules are enforced to reduce lost item at school, but rules
regarding pokemon cards in particular are in place as many older students have taken
advantage of younger children by manipulating them into giving up or trading away more
valuable cards unfairly.
I happened to have a large amount of pokemon cards at home which I thought could be
used as a fun learning tool for the children as the pokemon trading card game is math based
using mostly addition and subtraction. The cards feature health points that show how strong
a pokemon is and these are presented in multiples of ten. The creatures attacks have different
values that must be subtracted from this total when used against them. The cards also come in
different colours, types and levels which can leave for a variety of ways to sort the cards. I
discussed the cards with my supervisor and she agreed that the cards could be used in many
ways by the students. So I decided to bring the cards in and follow the classrooms emergent
learning techniques, meaning that the children created the activity we participated in.
Objective:
The children will:
1) Engage in social behaviours when working as a team, taking turns and discussing the
different creatures and their attributes.
2) Practice math skills related to identifying numbers, basic addition and subtraction, and
counting by tens.
3) Practice cognitive skills related to sorting, comparing and analyzing data displayed
materials.
Materials Used:

Pokemon Cards
Dice
Pokemon Card Box

Set Up:

Emergent Activity

1. I invited some students to join me on the carpet non-verbally by laying some cards out
in several rows beside me.
2. Two students joined me and began sorting the cards. I ask them how they were sorting
the cards and the students noted that they were sorting the cards by their number of
health points.
3. We created piles for cards based on their health point numbers, and put them in
numerical order. One of the students noticed that the HP numbers went up by tens.
After he noticed this we decided to count by tens each time we couldnt find a cards
pile.
4. In addition to sorting the cards by numbers, one student also started searching for
families among the cards. When he found one creature that evolved from another
we set them both aside.
5. After we finished sorting through a majority of the 300 cards I brought to the
classroom we observed the piles and discussed which piles had the most cards. The
students noted that the 50HP pile was the biggest pile.
6. After observing the piles some other students joined us and we searched for more
families within the sorted cards.
7. After we found approximately 30 pokemon families I suggested using the cards to play
a matching game.
 8. The students placed the cards on the carpet face down and began taking turns lifting up
two cards at a time to look for two pokemon from the same family.
9. While we played one student noticed that our game was taking a long time and
suggested using a die to determine the number of cards a person could flip on each
turn.
10. We agreed that this was a fun idea so each child took a die and rolled it on their turn.
11. This increased the number of cards that students and myself got to pick up most of the
time.
12. As we continued playing more children joined and we decided to split into teams.
13. After all of the cards had been matched we counted our cards to see which team found
the most matches.
14. After we determined the winner we put away any extra pokemon cards that werent
being used for other activities and the children were allowed to select five pokemon
cards to take home and use in the classroom as they choose.
Additional Emergent Use of Materials:

Some students chose pokemon cards with creatures they enjoyed for their looks and
drew them at the art table. After their drawings were complete we discussed them and
created a small write up for their personal best work binders.

After our main activity some students engaged in dramatic play and used wooden
building blocks to create a fortress for their creatures to live in, before acting our
their characters moves.

Some of the children sat together and discussed the numbers on their pokemon cards.
They determined which pokemon had the highest health point numbers, attack
numbers as well as comparing what type or element their pokemon came from (this
changes the colour and symbol on the card).
Learning Strategy #1
Challenges

While the children were sorting their pokemon cards I used challenges to help them explore
the numbers listed on the pokemon cards further, and to open discussion about the different
attributes of the cards. Examples include:
______ I see youve found a card with 60HP can you count by tens to find the pile of
cards with the number 60?
Now that weve sorted the cards by their numbers, lets search through them and read
the names and look at the artwork to find pokemon in the same family?
Can you count how many yellow electric cards we put in our 70HP pile?
Learning Strategy #2
Task Analysis

As the children participated I took note of their ideas for rules they wanted to add to our game,
or new ways to sort our cards. As they became comfortable with our original ideas, I
supported the students new ideas that made the sorting and matching game more complex.
Examples include:

Adding the additional category of families to our sorting activity after the children
were comfortable with sorting by numbers and could do so with ease.
Adding a students idea of the use of dice into each person's turn during our matching
game to make it more exciting, speed the activity up and encourage the use of counting
skills.

Overall Evaluation
What worked during this experience? Why?

What did not work during this experience? Why?

What might you have done differently?

What theory might you use to support these changes?