Math has gotten a bad reputation for being a boring and difficult subject, but incorporating hands-on activities and creative approaches can transform the learning experience and make math fun. Learn various strategies and resources for your math class that can make math fun, such as manipulatives, picture books, collaborative activities, review stations, and more.
In this blog post, Kristy, from 2 Peas and a Dog, and Rachael, from Rise over Run, will explore various methods to make math fun that inspire students to explore, share, and connect with math concepts in your classroom.
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10 Ways To Make Math Fun
Manipulatives (Rachael)
Students of all ages love hands-on activities in math. Math manipulatives not only help students make sense of math concepts, but they also make the students feel like they are playing in math class. With guidance and structure, we can allow students to play with the manipulatives to find patterns and connections on their own.
Recommended Math Manipulatives
- In elementary school, I recommend base ten blocks, pattern blocks, coins, linking cubes, and fraction tiles.
- In middle school, fraction tiles and pattern blocks can help students think about fraction operations. Linking cubes, nets, and 3D solids will help students understand volume and surface area. Algebra tiles can help students balance equations.
- As students move into high school math, algebra tiles are a great way to start operating with polynomials. In high school geometry, virtual manipulatives allow students to explore the properties of geometric figures.
All of these manipulatives build understanding and make math class a little more fun.
Picture Books (Kristy)
When was the last time you used picture books in your middle school math classroom? Picture books make math fun. They can add enjoyment to your lessons and help with concept attainment and retention. When you are planning your math units, take a look at your school and public library catalogues – what picture books do they have that could align with the concepts you need to teach?
If you are unsure where to start your search, get help from a librarian. Learn more about how school librarians can assist teachers in this blog post – 12 Ways a School Librarian Can Help Teachers.
As a fun end-of-the-year task, have your students work in groups to create picture books based on the key concepts you taught in class. This is a great way for students to showcase their learning and keep them engaged during the last few weeks of school.
Math-Focused Picture Books to Make Math Fun:
Collaborative Activities (Rachael)
In my experience, students have more fun when they get to interact with each other. When we design lessons that allow students to work together to problem solve, they benefit from hearing each other’s ideas. We can encourage students to share their reasoning, defend their ideas, and learn new methods from peers. By showing that the teacher is not the source of all knowledge, we are helping them to see themselves as capable mathematicians in the process.
Collaborative activities can be as simple as giving partners or groups a single task to solve. When the task has multiple solution paths, we often have different groups approach the problem differently, which is great! We can ask groups to share and defend their ideas to the class to promote a positive classroom culture.
To learn creative ways to create partners and groups in the classroom, check out the blog post – 7 Creative Ways to Make Partners and Groups in the Classroom.
Review Stations (Kristy)
Make math fun by turning math review into different station activities. Students enjoy lesson variety, so instead of assigning questions from the textbook to review for a test or exam, create different math stations to help students review the work. You do not need to create an entirely new math program for your math stations – just break up the textbook review work into different stations.
For example, if the textbook provides 30 review questions, create six different workspaces in your classroom. Try to vary the output at each station—for example, one station could be in the hallway working with chart paper and markers, while another could be using whiteboards and dry-erase markers to solve the questions. Changing how many questions students must complete at each station and the output method helps textbook review work become fun. These ideas help make math fun for students.
Have students let you know when they complete each station. You can check over their work and give them a fun sticker or stamp. Once they collect all six stickers (one for each station), they can work on something else. To learn more ideas about how to review concepts taught in class, check out this blog post – Making Exam Review Fun.
Discovery Lessons (Rachael)
I love allowing students to discover new concepts or formulas for themselves! Although you may hear a few groans in the beginning, when students discover a connection for themselves, they are always excited and proud.
To plan a discovery lesson in math, approach the lesson more like an experiment. Students will need to try their own methods and make observations before they come to a conclusion. These types of lessons promote productive struggle, which is necessary for deep learning in math.
To learn more about planning a discovery lesson that encourages productive struggle, check out this blog post.
Align Lessons To Real-Life (Kristy)
When teaching math concepts, try to align the lesson to real-life situations to help students understand things better. When teaching fractions, you can discuss cooking and baking, whereas temperature is a great way to explain integers. You can also have students investigate what careers regularly use the concepts you are teaching. For example, contractors regularly need the Pythagorean theorem.
Students can also learn financial literacy skills through budgeting activities that have them use real numbers they find online that are local to their area. For example, using local job salaries, apartment rental costs, and other living expenses is more relevant than giving students data sets for areas they don’t live near.
Check out this blog post – Interesting Real-Life Math Lessons – for real-life middle school math lesson examples.
Fun Math Classroom Decorations (Rachael)
A classroom doesn’t need to be elaborately decorated in order for students to learn. However, the decorations we choose can set the tone, welcome students, and help form a positive impression. If we want students to be excited about math class, we can use our classroom decorations to promote that positivity!
I had a bulletin board behind my desk labeled “Going the Extra Mile (or 5280 Feet),” where I would hang student work that showed outstanding effort. Students were always excited when they saw their work on that board. In a teacher friend’s classroom, I created a wall of math jokes, and her students loved reading the corny punchlines. In our school hallway, I created an error analysis bulletin board with lots of math problems that had mistakes. Students love finding someone else’s error!
To see even more fun ideas, see this blog post full of math bulletin boards.
Use Vertical Spaces (Kristy)
Not all lessons need to be practiced in a notebook. Allow students to work through math problems using classroom windows, desks, and whiteboards. This is a great way to encourage collaboration among students and make math fun.
Mental Math (Rachael)
Mental math has been a weakness for many of my students. They often rely on calculators so much that it prevents them from being efficient. When I decided to spend a few minutes working on mental math, I didn’t expect it to be fun. However, I have found that middle and high schoolers love it! They love sharing when they come up with an answer, and they also love when they learn a new strategy.
For example, I once asked high schoolers to subtract 23 from 1,000 in their heads. A few figured it out. Then I showed them they could change the problem to 999 – 22, and they were shocked! We talked about why it worked, and they wondered why they had never learned to do that.
Mental math became a fun, quick activity in my math classes, but it is so much more than that. Learning different ways to compute in your head builds fluency and confidence. With middle and high schoolers, I like to start by giving students a problem to solve mentally. Then, they share their different strategies, but I also show them new strategies. I like to give them visuals so they can see why the strategy works and that it isn’t just a trick.
If you’d like to learn more mental math strategies to share with your students, I have a free email series where I share videos and strategies for each operation.
Creative Writing Summative Tasks (Kristy)
Depending on where you teach, you might be required to have a summative assessment task for each unit of study. Not all summative assessments need to be unit tests. For units that allow students to be more creative, why not give them a creative writing choice board and allow them to showcase their math knowledge in written form? Here are some creative writing format suggestions to make math fun: Short Stories, Word Problems, Poems, Comics, Graphic Novels, etc.
Incorporating these strategies and tools into your math classroom can significantly enhance student engagement and comprehension. From tactile exploration with manipulatives to imaginative integration of picture books, collaborative problem-solving, and creative assessments, there are countless ways to make math fun, enjoyable, and meaningful.
By creating an interactive and supportive learning environment, we help students see math not just as a subject to be studied but as an exciting and essential part of their everyday lives. Whether you’re teaching middle or high school students, these ideas can bring a fresh perspective and make math fun.
Additional Reading
About The Authors
Rachael has taught middle and high school math and served as Math Coach for middle school math teachers. She loves presenting innovative teaching ideas to math teachers to help get their students thinking. She shares teaching tips and ideas on her website, Rise over Run. She loves creating engaging math resources and classroom decorations on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Kristy has taught ELA and other subjects to middle school students for over 17 years in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada. She is guilty of always having a book in her hand – even at the dinner table! She shares teaching content on her website, 2 Peas and a Dog and sells middle school education resources on Teachers Pay Teachers and Shopify.