I’m sure this has been done many times before, and I got the idea from Elizabeth Statmore’s “Life on the Number Line” game. I decided to make my own version of negative number football.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to fill the conceptual gaps my students have. Negative numbers are some of the most common struggle areas I’ve encountered during my time in education.

Here are the materials for the game:

• Desmos Game Board (Updated)
• Game Board
• Rules
• Game Cards
• Player Pieces
• Calculation Sheet

Update 9/23/19:

A Desmos activity…

Update 4/8/14:

• I made a game board with Desmos in order to use less paper and allow the students to move their game pieces easier.
• As usual, Desmos came through with a great improvement.

@DaneEhlert I connected a lines from the center to the point. Also, make a line to show who is ahead & by how much. https://t.co/YS41Z6QZQy

— Desmos.com (@Desmos) April 8, 2014

Update 1/20/15

• Denis Sheeran made a great change to the Desmos game board.

@DaneEhlert i’ll be digging through the page a lot. in the football desmos, i made the black line abs(a-b). It shows who’s winning better.

— Denis Sheeran (@MathEdisonHSNJ) January 20, 2015

What did I leave out? Do you have suggestions for improvement?