Hmmm? Probably thought it was a different kinda site.
(Work at school, play games at home)
Psssst!
-carefully looks around to make sure no one is watching, then waves you over-
You can download OR play (live emulator) Scorched Earth via Archive.org straight from your browser! Don’t get caught.
-walks away whistling unconvincingly-
Hearts does require strategy, as does contract bridge. I seem to recall that both were played, though not by many, in the cafeteria at lunch. If you wanted the crap game, it was the boys’ room, second floor.
Dice doesn’t teach statistics so much as it teaches odds and probabilities. Plus, it teaches that every event (or roll, if you prefer) is independent of every other event—there is no such thing as “Ten hasn’t hit for a while; so it’s due!” Good lessons to learn early in life, regardless.
When I first saw this thread, I thought it was going to be about games that the school blocked from being played on the playground. Anything involving a ball that was harder than a Nerf ball, for example; all in the name of safety, of course.
Using dice to teach that events are independent is like using Woodford Reserve bourbon to teach that alcohol is a poison. I mean, technically true, but it’s the least convincing way possible to demonstrate that concept.
I have played dice games with math PhDs. They STILL curse at their dice for rolling low, and know that they’re due a string of good rolls.
how do you play these games
You may want to be clearer. What games?
Just ask your teacher for help. Tell them there are a bunch of strange old men on the internet trying to play games with you. They’ll probably be glad you’re making new friends.
We played Spades. It’s not easy being productive when study hall is held on the bleachers in the gym.
For the roughly nine months I spent at a mental institution for high schoolers, I was assigned study hall in the art studio/wood shop. I generally had my homework done already. So, I found a bench and slept. You would think the noise of table saws and belt sanders would wake me. You would be wrong.
paper football and soccer, iirc
Both games are explained in Wikipedia.
Paper football (also called finger football, flick football, tabletop football, thump football, or freaky football) refers to a table-top game
We should take another step back and explain that a “table-top game” is a physical game that uses a table as a playing surface.
Of course both paper football and penny football require access to things that may be foreign to a contemporary schoolchild; paper and coins.
Good point, any video game is a tabletop game when you put your console on a table.
Perhaps the OP could try Game Boy football.
When I was in middle school, I had moved to Guam and my parents had bought my brother and I Game Boys because it was a bit of a shock to move from Bremerton, WA to suddenly living in a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean just north of the equator. All our friends and everything we knew was gone, and they were something to help us cope with the transition.
Anyway, I didn’t have much trouble with academics in school and in many of my classes I’d finish my assignment quickly and then I’d be sitting around with nothing to do for half the class. So I’d pull out a Game Boy and play games, usually Final Fantasy Adventure.
My teachers didn’t care because I was done with schoolwork, I wasn’t causing a distraction, and my grades were really high. So, that was my answer to “games the school hasn’t blocked”. But things today are probably different than they were '90-'92, plus the OP of this thread might not be bored out of their mind in class with nothing to do after having all their work done.
I absolutely know this happens, and it’s not at all the fault of the students, and it’s not even really the fault of the teachers. But it’s the fault of an educational system that looks at high-performing kids and said, “Adequacy is good enough!” and neglects their needs.
The goal for school shouldn’t be to reach adequacy, to be done with schoolwork, to prevent misbehavior, or to get high grades. It should be to give each student a productive struggle every day, a difficult set of coursework that is engaging and that helps them learn.
To the extent possible, kids should seek out these opportunities in school. To the extent possible within a world governed by standardized tests, teachers should create lessons that invite students to struggle.
And the people in charge? They need to revamp the way they see education.
It was the school system on Guam. I was very advanced there; when I was a freshman in high school most of my classmates in my math class were seniors. When I returned to Washington State I was a year behind in math, and was in classes with kids a year younger.
Tell them you want to be an astrophysicist and ask them to install Kerbal Space Program (avoid the sequel). It’s a great game simulation and you’ll learn orbital mechanics which could actually help you out later on in that career path. If they don’t believe you, ask a teacher/principle/IT guy to try it for themselves.