In our household – Wii Sports – Bowling

Nintendo’s Wii and Wii sports have been around for over 2 years now.  My family has been playing since the beginning and enjoy it very much.  It lets all of us play together, gets us off the couch and is a lot of fun.  Recently I began thinking about the learning potential of the game.  On the surface it seems simple – when it’s your turn stand up, move your hand backward, then forward again and release the ball.  I then thought about how scoring in bowling is much different than any other game.  I pondered how Wii Bowling could be used to excite students and teach them 1-3 digit addition and subtraction at the same time.

What I came up with is…

1. Begin with a lesson on how bowling is scored.
2. Re-enforce that lesson with practice examples.
3. Organize your students into groups of two.  Each takes a turn, one bowls while the other tracks the score on a score sheet.
4. The person keeping score must face away from the screen.  The person bowling shouts out the amount of pins knocked down after each ball is thrown.
5. The person keeping score marks down the score for each ball and calculates a total score for each frame on the sheet.
6. At the end of the game the students compare the sheets to the totals on the screen.  For each frame calculated correctly, that team receives the amount of points equal to the score for that frame.
7. After each student has bowled, calculate the total score for both games and decide which team wins!

Learning Materials:

• Learn to score: tutorials.com
• Lesson Plan: NEA
• Printable bowling score cards: Apollos Templates.
• Console: Nintendo Wii with Wii Sports.

Additional Learning Opportunities:

• Physics: The physics of bowling.
• Biomechanics: The biomechanics of bowling.
• Chemistry: The chemistry of bowling.

Have your own way of using Wii Bowling for education?  Leave a comment, we’d love to hear your ideas!

AGEd Tested: 3 years (not doing the mathematics)

Academic Benefits:

• 1-3 digit Addition
• 1-3 digit Subtraction (when determining the score for a particular frame)

Social Benefits:

• Multi-player gameplay
• Group interaction