Doughnut percents
This is one of a series of problems designed to develop students' team working skills. Other tasks in the series can be found by going to this article.
Doughnut Percents - printable dominoes
Doughnut Percents - printable rule cards
Doughnut Percents - printable hint cards
What are you aiming to do?
Every member of the team must end up with a set of four dominoes which join together to form a "doughnut" where touching ends have equal value. For example:
The task is only successfully completed when everyone on the team has completed their domino doughnut.
You will need to work in a team of four. If you have a fifth person available - use them as an observer (see guidance below).
Players pass dominoes to other team members in order to help one another complete their doughnut.
- Each member of the team starts with four dominoes in front of them.
- The dominoes in front of each person should be visible to everyone.
- Team members can only give dominoes; they cannot take dominoes from someone else.
- Each team member must have at least two dominoes in front of them at all times.
- No one can talk or give non-verbal signals to other members of the team.
Use an observer to check that the team obeys the rules and to keep a record of when members of the team help someone else (rather than, for example, when they just pass a piece on without looking at what the other person or team actually needs).
Observers can place one of the hint cards in the middle, if after a period of five minutes the team is not making any progress.
Why do this problem?
This team-building task is designed to develop students' team-working skills. If you wish to learn more about these skills, and find other team-builder tasks, take a look at this article.
This task depends upon members of the group noticing the needs of others and responding. It requires students to:
- respond to the needs of others
- consider the needs of the whole group
- help others to do things for themselves.
Possible approach
Share the purposes of the activity and the rules with the group.
If you have more than four people in a group then use an observer to ensure the team obeys the rules, and note when there is evidence of members of the team responding to the needs of others, as well as to place a hint card in the middle if one is needed.
Here are the rule cards and the hint cards.
As teams finish, ask them to discuss what they have learnt about working together. Use observers to feed into the discussions. Then spend some time discussing as a class how they might work more effectively in future.
Key questions
Can you give any good examples of when someone noticed what you needed and tried to help?
Possible support
Set A from Matching Fractions, Decimals and Percentages would be a suitable introductory problem.
Other skill-building tasks can be found by going to this article.
Possible extension
The dominoes can also be arranged into a pair of doughnuts or one large doughnut. Ask the team to create these shapes.
Sets B and C from Matching Fractions, Decimals and Percentages would be a suitable follow-up problem if your focus is on number work rather than team building.