Math instruction doesn’t have to be—and shouldn’t be—solely limited to paper and pencil practice. Math is all around your students in the real world, from helping out in the kitchen to playing on sports teams and the arts. But if students only view “math time” as silent desk work and exams, they’ll miss out on the realities of math and might even conclude that they’ll never be a “math person.”
Change how your students approach math with fun and easy activities that promote interactive learning.
Setting students up for future math success
With strong math engagement, learning will no longer feel like “work” but rather a fun, interactive challenge where students can experience success. Students who stay engaged with content are more likely to retain information and master foundational math skills to be well-equipped to take on higher-level math concepts in the future.
Why does student engagement matter in math?
Even the most well-intentioned lesson will fall short if your students are disengaged. It's no secret that children can perform better when there’s buy-in, excitement, and variety to keep and hold their attention during math lessons. The elementary school timeframe is an especially short and critical window to show students just how interesting math can be to inspire lifelong learning.
Incorporating instructional strategies for math can unlock student motivation and increase math confidence. Plus, students who are engaged with content are more likely to retain information and achieve mastery of foundational math skills, such as math fact fluency and fractions, to be well-equipped to take on higher-level math concepts in the future.
Importance of math fact fluency
Extensive research underscores the critical role of fact fluency in elementary school math and beyond. When students are fluent in basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts, they free up brain power and working memory to tackle more advanced math in the future, such as word problems, multi-step equations, algebra, and calculus. Math fact fluency also impacts students’ success with fractions, and their ability to retrieve math facts is a known predictor of success on standardized tests, data interpretation, and mathematical reasoning.
Why do fractions matter?
A foundational understanding of fractions significantly impacts students’ success with more advanced coursework, including algebra. In fact, research shows that knowledge of fractions at the end of grade 5 was identified as a strong and unique predictor of success many years later in high school math. By making elementary fractions instruction engaging, students will be much better prepared for advanced work with fractions in elementary school and in later grade levels.
Fun ways to make math fun to engage students
Math instruction doesn’t have to be boring or repetitive! Your students can have fun and boost math performance at the same time. Try these math teaching strategies to help your students learn and practice their math facts and important fraction concepts in a variety of ways.
- Infuse interactive learning. Math lends itself to powerful hands-on learning. Use manipulatives and models to help students “see” math concepts in real life. Provide a variety of manipulative options for students to discover during whole group and small group lessons. Manipulatives can also be great in math centers or math station bins.
- Make math problems fun. You can turn any practice question into a fun classroom challenge. Repurpose test review questions as a gallery walk around the classroom. Create a breakout challenge or math escape room using existing problems in your textbook. Have students work in small groups to create and solve their own fun math problems that relate to the real world for even stronger connections.
- Incorporate math games. Who doesn’t love a little friendly competition? Increase student math engagement with classic games students love. Play math bingo, practice skills using a deck of cards, or have students play math board games in small groups.
- Take math outside. A simple change of scenery can often increase student motivation and bring something new to a lesson. Have your students complete practice problems outside on clipboards or on picnic blankets. Grab some chalk to write math problems on the pavement. Host a relay race with math questions…the options are endless!
- Empower students with choice. Just like adults, your students appreciate having options. When appropriate and possible, provide students with choices to increase student motivation. Create math choice boards with a variety of early-finisher options. Give students an option in how they can present their final work on an assessment or practice problem. Provide two different problem sets with different themes, like sports or animals.
- Use online games and competitions. Take game-based fun up a level and increase student learning with digital math gamification tools. Use fast-paced review platforms like Kahoot, Blooket, or Gimkit to reinforce concepts. Create your own virtual escape room using Google Forms. Or try game-based and interactive math tools like Reflex and Frax to help students have fun with math practice. Reflex and Frax are fueled by adaptive games, which allow students to learn by doing as they complete interactive puzzles, challenges, and missions while having fun.
Gamifying math education with Reflex and Frax for boosted math performance
From serving aliens ice cream to piloting a hot air balloon, Reflex helps students develop fluency while staying engaged with fast-paced games that don’t feel like work. As students progress in Reflex games, the system continuously adjusts the difficulty of fact retrieval based on their progress, providing an adequate level of challenge within each student’s current abilities. Reflex helps foster an engaging classroom community as students work to achieve individual and group milestones.
You can also infuse game-based learning to help students develop a strong understanding of fractions. With Frax, students develop mastery of fractions as they progress through carefully scaffolded story-driven missions. Fun features like customization, engaging offline materials, and more keep students engaged with fractions…sometimes for the first time ever!
And students make huge math strides while having fun with Reflex and Frax. The latest research found that across all achievement levels, grade 3 and 4 students who used Reflex and Frax experienced significant academic growth in short periods of time with larger score gains compared to non-users. The most academically at-risk excelled at even greater rates. Frax and Reflex users who scored two or more grade levels below in the fall had 56% greater scale score gains and were nearly three times as likely to reach their stretch growth goals.
Are you ready to make math fun and engaging? Start a trial today with your students!
