Cicada Game

Abstract

The Cicada Game encourages students to discover through gameplay how the cicada came to have such a unique periodic life cycle. Using a 100s chart, players take the role of cicada or predator and try to choose a life cycle period that will be most advantageous for their species. The players secretly decide the number of years that will represent their cycle of emerging from underground. Without telling each other, the players choose a number with these conditions: cicadas choose a number between 10–20 and predators choose a number between 2–10. Placing markers on the 100s chart to represent years of emergence, players discover which years both cicada and predator overlap, or emerge simultaneously. If there are fewer than 4 overlaps, the cicada wins! Four or more overlaps and the predator wins. Students will discover through game play that the prime number life cycle periods are most advantageous for the cicada. Then they will learn that periodical cicadas actually do have life cycle periods of 13 and 17 years, which are both prime! In addition to the game itself, this article also includes several additional curricular integration suggestions for connections with language arts, engineering, and visual arts.

Keywords:

• Common core-math
• NGSS
• patterns
• using mathematics and computational thinking
• developing and using models
• cooperative groups
• biological evolution/unity and diversity
• organisms: structure
• function
• processes
• other combination

Supplemental Resource

A cicada game handout is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/00368148.2024.2340799.

Online Resources

BugInfo: Cicada Killer Waspswww.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/cicada-killer-wasps

Bug of the Week: Cicada Tymbal Vibratinghttps://youtu.be/PJTVMUcOfxo?si=vuFFyZdcHrO53bpo

Cicada Mania: Songs, Sounds, Noisewww.cicadamania.com/cicadas/cicada-songs-audio-sounds-noise/

Music of Nature: Periodical Cicadas – Brood Vhttps://musicofnature.com/periodical-cicadas-brood-v/

Noisy Cicadas Are Emerging Earlier

www.scientificamerican.com/article/noisy-cicadas-are-emerging-earlier

Planet Earth/BBC Earth: Periodical Cicadas Overrun the Foresthttps://youtu.be/EWr8fzUz-Yw?si=ebMc4MEUUwtDZB85

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dana Atwood-Blaine

Dana Atwood-Blaine ([email protected]) is the Jacobson Elementary STEM Fellow and associate professor of elementary education

Chepina Rumsey

Chepina Rumsey is an associate professor of mathematics education, both at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa.