Students love a little friendly competition! Classroom games, challenges, interactive math activities, gamified learning, and bulletin boards are all great ways to increase motivation and student buy-in.
Spark classroom excitement with fun math bulletin board ideas
A math bulletin board is a great tool to make learning progress visible while strengthening a sense of classroom community. When it comes to math fact fluency, visual displays like bulletin boards can also boost classroom engagement, encourage student practice with math facts, and give students ownership over their individual goals.
Promote math fact fluency and student engagement with bulletin boards
Adaptive and individualized, ExploreLearning Reflex is the most effective (and fun!) system to help students master basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. As students progress through online game-based challenges, teachers can measure and celebrate fluency achievements with insightful reporting tools. Reflex bulletin boards can extend online learning, foster a spirit of friendly competition, and increase student engagement. Bulletin boards can also help all learners, including at-risk students and students with dyscalculia and dysgraphia, feel more confident as they visually celebrate their math fact fluency growth alongside their classmates.
Six math bulletin board ideas for friendly competition
Teachers got creative and made unique bulletin boards to promote teamwork and fluency growth in Reflex. Keep reading for math bulletin board ideas to try in your classroom!
Skate to Success
Melanie Asaro, a 5th-grade teacher in Atascadero Unified School District in California, celebrated math fact fluency success and Reflex progress with a skate park-themed bulletin board.
“My class is very into skateboarding, so we designed a skate park with three tracks. They work their way along each track: Addition and Subtraction 0-10, Multiplication and Division 0-10, and Multiplication and Division 0-12. The track is broken into 10% to 100% percentage point blocks. When they complete a track, they earn classroom cash and are moved to the next track. When they make it to the end of all three tracks, they land in the skate park at the bottom and earn a bonus prize of items donated by a local community skate park like cool stickers, keychains, and pins,” said Asaro.
Explore other sports-themed Reflex bulletin board ideas!
Raise the Temperature
Fourth-grade classrooms in Guilford County School District, North Carolina, used temperature bulletin boards to track multiplication and division fluency growth. Each classroom monitored their average classroom fluency growth on a paper thermometer. Individual students also added their blue badges to the middle of the board once they reached 100% fluency on Reflex.
Go for Game-Based Goals
Robyn Engelson, a math teacher for the Bureau of Non-Public Schools, New York City Department of Education, wanted to try something different to encourage regular Reflex usage. She created a poster with pictures of the different games in Reflex, including the games students can unlock after achieving the Green Light. Once a student unlocks a new game, Engelson writes their name on a sticky note for students to place by the Reflex game they unlocked.
Her game-based board has helped motivate her students and increase usage. “They were so excited to see how many games they opened that it motivated them to play more and get their name up on new games to complete the chart. Not only are the students becoming math fact fluent, but they are gaining confidence in themselves as well. And the board is filling out. Can’t wait to see how it looks in June!” said Engelson.
Add a Dose of Competition
An elementary school interventionist in Clover Park School District, Washington, created a bulletin board to foster healthy competition among grade levels and encourage students to achieve the Green Light regularly. Her bulletin board tracked Reflex usage for first, second, third, and fourth graders.
She also kept track of high scores with a Reflex Leaderboard, which helped motivate her students. “Kids were very competitive about getting their high scores added to it,” said the interventionist. “I saw how motivating and powerful Reflex was for helping kids become more confident and successful with their math facts, which we know increases their ability to learn more complex math.”
Motivate with Fluency Percentages
Brittany Rogers, a 3rd-grade teacher in Cabarrus County School District, North Carolina, helped charge grade-wide competition and fluency growth with a hallway bulletin board.
“The 3rd-grade team at my school decided to have a little Reflex competition between the five homerooms. Each Friday, we check the class total percentage mastered report and chart the growth on a poster outside of our classrooms. The students really want their homeroom to win, so they have been working extra hard on Reflex and often ask about their personal growth. This competition has been easy to implement, takes little time, and has given the students another reason to love Reflex,” said Rogers.
Reward Top Scores
Kelly Guglietta, a resource teacher for grades 3-5 in Newton County School District, Georgia, created a Reflex “top score” bulletin board. Before using Reflex, Guglietta struggled with interactive ways to get her students excited about math. Worksheets didn’t work well, and students needed to practice their math facts.
“Since starting Reflex, my students have begged to be in the program. My class loves Reflex. I even have students working at home,” said Guglietta.
“My class loves competition. I created a top score Reflex wall in my classroom. Every time students 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 die. Whatever number it lands on, the person holding the top score for that game wins a prize. They love it.”
Keep students engaged and build math fact fluency with Reflex
Whether serving aliens ice cream or piloting a hot air balloon, students develop math fact fluency and have fun with Reflex’s interactive math activities. Using gamification and adaptive learning, Reflex helps students practice math facts through game-based challenges appropriate to their current level of understanding. A math bulletin board is one of the many ways to encourage Reflex usage and increase student engagement in your classroom.
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