Curated and Reviewed by
Lesson Planet
You know you have stumbled on something interesting when you launch this app. You are suddenly taken into a world of mystery and intrigue, and of course, math-skills practice.
171 Views
62 Downloads
CCSS:
Adaptable
Additional Tags
App Overview
Mystery Math Town is oriented around a town map where you travel through houses, solve mysteries, and collect fireflies. The object of the game is to find all the firefly jars that are hidden throughout the houses. You navigate through each room of the house looking for the jars, collecting numbers to use in later problems, and answering mathematical questions along the way. Don't worry, you are not alone. You have a friendly little ghost friend who joins you along the way.
Capabilities:
- Allows multiple users, each with unique customizable avatar
- Customize skills practice for each player by selecting an appropriate range of numbers
- Extra challenges are unlocked as you progress through the map
- Build equations with your collection of numbers by filling in the missing operands
- The game gets more difficult as you progress
- There is an overall mystery to solve. Players need to collect portraits and gather clues from their comments (the portraits talk!)
Operations and Math Skills Categories:
- Addition
- 0 through 10
- 11 through 20
- 21 through 50
- Subtraction
- 0 through 10
- 11 through 20
- 21 through 50
- Multiplication
- x1, x2, x5, x10
- x1 through x10
- Includes dice and tally marks to represent numbers as well as integers
Instructional Ideas
- As a class, gather the portrait clues and solve the mystery together
- Add a literacy component. Have learners provide written explanations for how they solved the mystery
- Have them cite specific information given by the portraits to support their reasoning.
Classroom Considerations
- This app could be played for hours. Once you get started, it's difficult to stop! Plan accordingly. If you have a 1-1 program and learners are allowed to take their tablets home, this could be a great app for extra skills practice. If not, consider using at a math station.
Pros
- Visually beautiful app with delightful music
- Spatial awareness
- Requires strategy and critical thinking
- Engaging activity that gradually gets more difficult
Cons
- No reporting or status feature to show how well a player is progressing
- Limited control over the types of problems
- Can't measure the overall coverage of number operations