For teachers

A five-minute warm-up about how big things are.

Areabake is three short games about magnitude: how heavy, how far, how fast, how many. They fit the start of a math or science class, work projected on one screen, and need nothing from your students but a browser.

What your school will ask

  • No accounts

    Nobody signs up or logs in. There is nothing to create or remember.

  • No chat

    Players cannot message each other or anyone else.

  • Nothing to install

    It runs in any modern browser, including Chromebooks.

  • No ads

    There are no adverts on the site today.

  • Ages 13 and up

    Areabake is built for secondary students and adults.

  • Private by default

    Progress stays in the browser. Analytics run only if someone says yes.

If your school filters the web, ask IT to allow areabake.com. The full detail is on the privacy page.

What each game practises

Daily

Ordering quantities across orders of magnitude, and reasoning from partial feedback.

Five things, one hidden measurement, three tries. After each try the class learns how many are in the right place, never which ones.

Bigger

Comparing two quantities and estimating how many times larger one is.

Higher or lower, one pair at a time. Runs are short, so it works as a two-minute opener or a reward at the end of a lesson.

Sets

Grouping by a measured property rather than by what things are.

Sixteen things, four groups that weigh about the same. A lion and an upright piano end up together, which is the conversation you want.

The standard it touches

Common Core Math 8.EE.A.3

Use numbers written as a single digit times a power of ten to estimate very large or very small quantities, and to say how many times as much one is than the other.

Areabake gives students the intuition that standard asks for: a feel for which of two things is bigger, and by roughly how much. It is practice, not a lesson plan or an assessment. Read the standard.

A five-minute routine

  1. Project today's Daily. Everyone sees the same puzzle, wherever they are.
  2. Give the class one minute to agree an order, smallest at the top.
  3. Submit once. The game says how many are right, not which. Ask: which ones are we surest about, and why?
  4. Use the remaining tries. When it is solved, read the real figures together.
  5. Close with one question: which two were closest, and how many times bigger is the largest than the smallest?

Using it with a class?

I would like to hear how it went, and what would make it more useful. Get in touch.