How am I going to make this math lesson interesting? No matter the time of the school year, it’s challenging to mix up your classroom routine when teaching math. You have standards to cover and tight timelines to follow, but your students (and you!) often get bored with the same old same old when it comes to learning math. Introduce a topic, practice, re-teach, assess, repeat. But what if building fact fluency could be more fun and impactful?
With ExploreLearning Reflex, math interest and motivation transcend digital practice to inspire class and school-wide math fact fluency progress. Whether your students are already experiencing the power of Reflex or just getting started, there are always new ways to engage students with math concepts and increase the Reflex excitement.
How to encourage Reflex usage and engage students in math lessons
Level up your classroom engagement and math fact practice with these seven ideas.
1. Bulletin Boards
Reflex bulletin boards are a great way to track progress and encourage success. These displays make learning visible for students, build community, and provide cross-content connections. Bulletin boards also give students ownership over their learning, which helps encourage active math fact practice as learners monitor and celebrate their Reflex growth.
Involve your students in theme brainstorming and select a bulletin board concept that resonates with the group. If students are excited about the theme, they will be more excited to practice their math facts to witness their own success on the bulletin board. Decide if you want to set individual or class-wide goals, and be sure to explain to students how and when you will update the board to track progress.
Themes can range from serious to straight-up fun. Here are some ideas to get started.
- Play off of the current season (like these winter-themed Reflex bulletin boards), holidays, or weather.
- See green with a Green Light-inspired bulletin board.
- Incorporate national or local events that students care about, such as sports championships, pop culture news, or local community festivals.
- Touchdown! Take inspiration from teachers who created football-themed math facts boards, like a football field graph design or a Super Bowl-themed design.
- Celebrate goals with other sports-themed Reflex bulletin boards, such as basketball and soccer, a home run baseball fact fluency progress tracker, or a skate park design.
- Involve superhero characters or create a board inspired by a Reflex game, like Ninja to the Stars.
2. Math fact competitions
Encourage friendly Reflex competition in your classrooms, among grade levels, or across the district, as students did in Fresno Unified School District. Your students love going for the Green Light on Reflex. Why not play off of their natural engagement with a Green Light-centered contest for rewards (or simply bragging rights!)? You can also utilize data from your Reflex individual and group fluency reports to create competitions based on facts mastered or fluency growth.
Kelly Guglietta, a resource teacher for grades 3-5, created a Reflex top-score competition with her students. “My class loves competition. Every time they play a game and get a top score, the old score is erased and replaced with the new one. They love erasing another student’s name and putting theirs in. Each game from Reflex is assigned a number. On Fridays, I roll a dice. Whatever number it lands on, the person holding the top score for that game wins a prize. They love it,” said Guglietta.
Guglietta’s “Reflex Top Score” wall in her classroom.
3. Charm bracelets
Boost engagement and make fluency progress visual (and stylish) for students with individual bracelets. Start with string and a pack of inexpensive beads. Each time a student passes a new fluency percentage, allow them to select a bead to add to their bracelet. A teacher in Maryland incorporated a bracelet Reflex challenge and even displayed the bracelets on a bulletin board for increased motivation.
4. Classroom tree
Bring the outdoors in with a touch of nature that is sure to increase math interest. Use crumpled butcher paper to create a classroom Reflex Milestone Tree like 3rd-grade teachers in Missouri did. “When students reach a milestone, such as 100 new fluent facts or 90% fluency, we print out their milestone certificate, and they get to add a leaf to the tree. On the leaf, students write their name and a description of the milestone they reached,” said the teachers.
Kristen Marrazzo, a 2nd-grade teacher in New Jersey, created a monkey branch classroom tree with students’ pictures “swinging” through math facts. “Once a week, we give out awards, and they get to hopefully move their ‘monkey’ to a higher level fluency branch. It truly has motivated the students to want to master more math facts,” said Marrazzo. “Reflex has given my students more confidence when solving addition and subtraction facts. They are no longer scared to tackle a 3-digit addition or subtraction problem because they are more confident in their ability to solve simple facts. They no longer look at a difficult problem and get frustrated.”
5. Rewards
Celebrate Reflex milestones and math fact fluency growth with a variety of rewards. Carrie Mayville, a 2nd-grade teacher in Illinois, used Reflex Brag Tags to celebrate success. “I award my students brag tags and a color-coded bead to put on a ball chain necklace. The students are very proud and love to wear their necklaces around the school so others can see what they have accomplished,” said the teacher.
Heidi Butkus, a 2nd-grade teacher in California, uses stickers to incentivize and honor students. “We have a sticker chart, and they add a sticker each time they hit the Green Light. They love it!”
Reward students with Reflex-themed swag, including pencils, stamps, keychains, stickers, bracelets, and more. You can also download and print Reflex pyramid charts from the Reflex Engagement Kit available in the Educator Resource Hub. Explore dozens of other free and affordable classroom rewards that you can use to celebrate Green Light days and student fact fluency growth.
6. Certificates
Recognize individual classroom accomplishments with Reflex student milestone certificates. Send the awards home with students or display the certificates on a bulletin board or in a hallway for increased recognition.
7. Celebration parties
Increase group-wide motivation with a classroom party incentive. Work with your students to establish a classroom fluency goal and reward. Host a pizza party, watch a movie, take a field trip, extra recess time…the options are endless.
Ms. Delores Alexander, an Instructional Specialist in Detroit, hosted a Reflex celebration for her 5th-grade students, complete with pizza and Crabby-themed Reflex cookies! Students in South Carolina celebrated their Reflex achievements with an ice cream sundae party inspired by the namesake Reflex game, Alien Sundae. Math coach Dale Smith created the challenge to motivate his students with a little healthy competition between classes.
“The students became more focused in the computer lab after Smith introduced this incentive. We tracked their progress all semester, and they would come up to me in the hallway to see how their classes were doing with math facts,” said the school’s computer lab monitor, Kevin Boozer. “The contest became quite competitive. Some students even worked on Reflex at home and over winter break.”
Be sure to establish when and how you will track growth and explain how individual student fluency progress contributes to overarching group goals. With everyone on board to meet a challenge, students will be motivated and engaged to do their part to practice their own math facts.
