Sandwich factory board game with manipulative gears for primary students to construct the ways to find least common multiples : a case study

Abstract

Students enjoy playing games, as games bring motivation and active learning. Board games could be used as meaningful learning tasks for mathematics education. For this purpose, this study employed the qualitative method, case study, to examine the Sandwich Factory Board Game with fourth grade students. The board game designed with an educational purpose in mathematics is used to teach least common multiple concept. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to develop an educational board game and explore students' LCM learning process while playing the board game. Nine students were selected from 45 students through the prior knowledge test and were divided into 3 groups (high achievers, middle achievers, and low achievers) to participate in this study eventually. Data was collected using video recording, interview, and questionnaire. And the results found that all students are able to develop efficient methods to find the LCM. The findings also show that students had great interests in the game, especially in gold trading, calculation, and function cards.