Food Attack

The FracMen is an innovative team from SK Mentu, Simunjan, Sarawak. Our team members consist of two teachers and three pupils aged 11 to 12. Our team has created a card game known as Food Attack. The idea of developing the Food Attack game was inspired by the card game Heart Attack. The aim of the Food Attack game is to help primary school pupils enhance their skills in solving mixed operations such as addition and subtraction involving whole numbers, proper fractions, and mixed numbers. This game can be used as an activity to teach Mathematics for primary school pupils during practice and production stages of teaching.

Our team selected food as the theme for this game because pupils are more familiar with the topic, and the visualisation of food to represent fractions can ease the pupils’ understandings. In addition, pupils also learn about the application of fractions in their daily lives when doing this activity. Therefore, we truly hope that the game, which we proposed in this project, will help to ease both teachers and pupils in teaching and learning the targeted topic. We aspire to provide a solution to make learning fractions more enjoyable and interactive for the pupils.

At the end of the intervention using the Food Attack game, pupils should be able to: determine the fractions by looking at the picture of coloured parts of the food; change the denominator of two or more fractions by doing multiplication or division; convert whole numbers into proper fractions or mixed numbers; add two or more numbers involving whole numbers, proper fractions and mixed numbers; subtract two or more numbers involving whole numbers, proper fractions and mixed numbers; and solve mixed operations of addition and subtraction involving whole numbers, proper fractions, and mixed numbers.

Food Attack is a structured-play learning activity because teachers set the rules and clear learning objectives for the pupils. This game is very much student-centred as pupils will play individually in a group of four and the teacher acts as moderator. When playing the game, the pupils are involved in active participation and spontaneously choose the questions using the digital spinner. Pupils will subconsciously gain problem-solving skills involving the addressed mathematical problems and experience decision-making when doing this activity as they carefully choose the right card before matching it with the answers. Lastly, this game is fun and motivating because pupils compete with their peers to win the game.

Food Attack game is a frugal activity as we use a very minimal budget. First, our team creates the cards using the back of used papers, printing them in small sizes to minimise the printing cost. This saves more paper. By doing this, we can also lower the laminating cost as we can laminate up to 12 pieces of card using a single piece of film. Next, Food Attack is a low-budget project because we use Microsoft PowerPoint to make the digital spinner. Lastly, the designs for the cards are drawn by the pupils themselves. Overall, the cost of producing a set of the Food Attack game is as low as MYR 2.00.