Using Games to Increase Math Fluency

Posted on by

by Jamie Fenicle, Region 2 MCTM Director

If you are old enough you remember the good old fashion time tests that we used to take in 3rd grade.  I can still remember the bulletin board with the football field on it and each of us with our football.  As you increased your speed you got to move your football closer to the goal.  Now for many of us, this was low stress and high reward because we got to see our football move pretty fast.  But for those whose football either never moved or moved very little, this became quite a stressful event.  Over my 28 years of teaching I have mostly taught middle and high school math where learning your facts was long gone and most kids just asked a friend if they were solving an equation and didn’t know a basic fact.  For five years I worked with elementary age students in two school districts and part of my job was to provide support in the classrooms with either enrichment or with students who were struggling.  Sometimes I would do an activity with the whole class and sometimes small groups but what I always found were the times I did math fluency and gamified it, the students made so many gains and didn’t even think about the fact that they were doing MATH!!!!  

Here are some of my favorites.

  1. War:  Whether you do Addition, Subtraction, or Multiplication, students will beg to keep playing this game.  It is so easy to adjust based on your skill level, from just basic addition where all the face cards are 10, to subtract larger minus smaller, to even looking at positive and negative integer operations by using the black suits as positive and the red suits as negative.   If you get a tie or a WAR, instead of 3 cards down, just do the next round and the winner takes all.  The only operation that would be too difficult to tackle on this one is division.
  2. Connect Four:  This game can also be played with addition, subtraction, and multiplication.  Create or grid as large or small as you want and fill it with any possible answers that you can get with two dice.  You can use 6 sided or 10 sided dice, just adjust your boards accordingly.  Players take turns rolling both dice and do the operation you have assigned.  They try to mark off 4 squares in a row before their opponent.  If they get a total and that square is already colored in or covered with a game piece, they lose a turn.  Modifications include:  10 sided dice and 2 different colored dice for positive and negative.
  3. Math BINGO:  Such an easy prep game and can be tailored to any facts that you are looking to practice.  For this game, you would make your own Bingo boards and choose the numbers for the problems you want to study.  This could involve specific fact families or for older students it could have multiple operations as well.  You could incorporate positive and negative numbers along with larger multiplication and division problems for older students as well.

I hope these games are helpful to you and remember, even your older students like to play games that aren’t on technology and who couldn’t use a quick 15 minute break to do some math fluency.  Happy Gaming!!!!!