One Fish. Two Fish. [A Lesson in Probability]

As an introduction to probability, my fellow future teachers and I started with a simple gold fish activity. What I love about these kinds of activities is that they give students the ability to not only see a visual but also let them work with manipulatives.

Items Needed:

Colored Goldfish
Ziploc Bag
Questionnaire [aka. worksheet]

Each group of students gets a sample of fish. This sample should have a mixture of colors. The group is to then count the number of fish in their sample and separate the fish by "healthy" fish and "sick" fish (the green fish are the sick fish). Then, they record the number of healthy fish and the number of sick fish. The students finish the questionnaire based on the numbers they recorded.

I think this is a great way for students to be able to see probability at work by being able to physically move the fish into their different groups. The same could be said if you decided to have students work with a deck of cards (i.e. What is the probability that, when selecting a card at random, you would draw a heart?). This type of activity could be used with any manipulative you choose, and therefore could be relevant to many topics across the curriculum.