One of my favorite board games is Othello. As a fan of solitaire types of games, I found as a teenager that I could spend a decent amount of time with Othello because of its strategy building. I love puzzles and simple but challenging games. This is a fave.

Othello is easy to start, easy to play, and can be as challenging as two players want to make it. The basic premise is opposite colors on the chips, black and white, which can be flipped when a player places a chip such that their color is on opposite sides in a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line. As strategic sense is developed, an individual may look for key positions that will facilitate multiple flips on their turn. Simple but engaging, for sure.

The winner is the individual who ends the game with the most pieces on the board, which is a great place to look at opposites and differences. Who wins, and by how much? This is my basic question in the classroom when we look at integer operations that otherwise confuse struggling students.

For example, 6-4 is easy enough for my students to calculate as 2. However, 4-6 throws them off, even if they have encountered such problems in the past. My ongoing questioning strategy is to ask, which team wins? Team negative or team positive?

But wait, aren’t they both positives? I help my students to understand that subtracting 6 is the same as putting a negative 6 in the problem, which seems to be accepted the majority of the time. In other words, subtraction has the same effect as adding the opposite.

The team approach really depends on the difference model of subtraction. Students often struggle because they see subtraction only as taking away. Spending some time visiting the difference model and building this approach to subtraction is well worth the time, and Othello is a great option for introducing or reinforcing the idea.

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