Ethan wakes up one morning to find the improbable has happened: there is a cat stuck on his head. The cat, named Odds, will not detach itself until Ethan wins a game of probability with it. They play several games and explore several situations involving chance until Ethan is finally successful. He then applies his new understanding to his goal shooting outcomes and makes a strategic decision.

1.

Prior to reading, explore the students’ understanding of chance and probability by working through a few scenarios with marbles, counters, or Unifix blocks of different colours. Model the language used to express the chances of an outcome occurring.

2.
 

• If this jar is filled with only red lollies, what is our chance of taking out a red one?
• If there is 1 green lolly and 11 red lollies, what is the probability of getting the green one? A red one? Can we express that as a fraction?
• If there are 3 blue, 3 green, and 6 red, what are the chances of getting each colour? Let’s test that a few times. Why was our result different from the “odds”? 

Discuss places in our lives where we have to consider probability when we make decisions. Record some of these to refer to later.

3.

Share the book with your students. As you read, discuss some of the scenarios (or games) Ethan and Odds play. Discuss the concepts of fairness, chance, and impossibility.

4.

Go back to the sock game in the story (pp. 11–13). Discuss how the odds get better after each withdrawal of a sock. Ask students to work in several small groups and model this situation using a set number of different pairs of socks (or paper cutouts of socks). For example, 5 pairs = 10 socks. As they work through their model, ask them to record each new possible outcome as a fraction. Withdraw one, and now the chance of getting a pair is 1/9, then 1/8, etc. They then play the game until they get a pair. Bring the class back together and look at the results for the groups.

• How do we account for the variance in the number of times it takes to get a pair?
• How would we make this an impossible game? Better odds or worse odds?

5.

In conclusion, go back to the ideas from the introduction about places in our lives where we have to consider probability.

• What role does chance play in our lives?
• What kind of things do we do to improve odds, or when do we decide it is worth taking a chance when the odds are “bad”?

6.

For further investigation, students could design a game of chance and record the outcomes over several trials, evaluate games of chance played at school galas, or investigate odds in lotteries and raffles.