Yahtzee Activity

Standard #8 involves using various instructional strategies as well as building skills that
students can apply. This activity allows students to be hands-on with the content. This
activity also applies their knowledge to a game that they could play in real life, Yahtzee!

Core Standard and Objective:

Students will be able to calculate the probability of the desired outcome occurring and make
predictions based on the probability

Essential Question(s):

Why do we put so much faith in chance?

How does understanding probability help you make decisions?

How do activities materials etc. connect to students’ prior knowledge:

This lesson is loosely based on the game Yahtzee, which most students have played.

Assessments (Formative and/or summative):

The activity and discussion participation will be considered formative assessments.

Learning Activities: (Based on a 30-minute period)

5 minutes- Hand out dice, assign “roles” and introduce today's activity
1 role will be playing for 6s only
1 role will be playing with most occurred number attempting to get Yahtzee

20 minutes- Have students play their “roles”. I will stand with the students as they play, and
prompt them to calculate probability and ask them questions. They will get 3 rolls per turn and
will write down the score after each turn.

Scoring:
Yahtzee = 50 points
Highest occurring numbers summed up. (if 3 6s, the score would be 18)

5 minutes- Class Discussion. We will calculate the mean of both “roles” (Playing for “Yahtzee”
and playing for only 6s. We will compare the results and discuss which method proved to be
more effective.
Resources:

5 Dice
Paper and writing utensils for students