My name is Isabelle, and today I’ll be sharing the activity Go Fish. Go Fish is a lower elementary level activity in which students share a bowl of goldfish crackers to simulate the challenges that arise when trying to divide things equitably, making strong connections to social studies, math, as well as science.
In this activity, students will be able to compare amounts and describe which is more and which is less. They’ll also be able to work cooperatively to solve a problem, list some items that may be shared, and identify ways to promote sharing. The materials that you’ll need for this activity are a bowl, 10 goldfish per participating student plus more for snacking, Ziploc baggies, and that’s it!
Activity Procedure
You’ll want to tell your students, “today I brought in this bowl of goldfish crackers and I’m so excited because in this bowl there are so many crackers that each of you can take as many as you want, just don’t eat them yet.”
I’ve brought in seven of my favorite colleagues to help me demonstrate.
To begin, start by passing the bowl of goldfish. So now that your students have passed around the bowl of goldfish, you can engage them in a discussion to reflect upon what just happened. Note that it is common for the bowl not to make it all the way around.
Next we’ll have your students count how many goldfish they each got, and on the board record that number next to each student’s name. You can ask your students a couple of questions, such as, are you happy with the number of crackers that you have? Do you think what we did was fair? And why or why not?
Next, ask students to return the crackers to the bowl and tell them that you’re going to pass it around a second time, but this time in a way that is fair to everyone. Ask them to brainstorm how they can make sure that everyone gets the same number of crackers and let them try out some of their ideas. At this point, it’s important to really take a step back and allow your students to try to come up with their own solutions to distributing the goldfish. Some of the most common strategies that students come up with are, each student takes a specific number of crackers and passes the bowl. Each student takes a handful and passes the bowl. Each student takes a scoop of something, like a plastic cup, and passes the bowl. And each student takes one goldfish and passes the bowl until it is empty.
Now ask your students to count how many crackers they have. They should each have ten crackers. Return to the board and record this number under round two next to each student’s name.
This is a great place to have your students practice some basic math. They could compare the number of goldfish they had in round one to the number of goldfish they have in round two. In which round did they have more goldfish? Which is more? Which is less? You could even have them calculate the difference between the number of goldfish they had in each round, or anything else that you’d like them to do with this data.
At this point, feel free to let your students snack on the goldfish crackers, but not the crackers that they’ve been handling. Have them trade in ten of their crackers for a clean baggie of, yep, you guessed it, ten goldfish.
This lesson plan offers several discussion questions to help your students reflect upon what happened in this activity, such as, what was difficult about sharing the crackers fairly? Other questions have your students relate what they learned in this activity and apply it to other parts of their lives. You might ask them, what are some things that you like to share? What are some things that you don’t like to share? What are some things that you share in the classroom, and what are some things that you share at home?
This was the activity Go Fish! For this activity and more resources, visit us at www.populationeducation.org.