I have been looking for Maths resources which can be used to tie lessons in with the World Cup. I stumbled across a number of free online games produced by Sumdog, one of which is Penalty Shootout.
The concept is simple and effective. To take a penalty, the player is given a question and the four possible answers are shown in 4 corners of the goal. Get the question correct and it’s a goal. Get it wrong and the keeper pulls of a save or the ball rebounds off the woodwork. There is also a time limit of 5 seconds in which to answer the question – take too long and the penalty goes harmlessly wide. Control then switches to player 2 (human or computer opponent). The game follows the traditional penalty shootout rules of 5 penalties for each team and then sudden-death if there is still a tie.
There is also the option for a two-player mode where pupils can compete directly against each other. This worked really well when I tried it with a class.
There are a choice of ten difficulty levels so the game is suitable from early primary right through to early secondary. I ran it with an S3 Access Maths class and it was certainly challenging enough (and very engaging) for them.
