Eight Easy Ways to Get Students to Enjoy Math

 Most children are not fond of math. Math is boring simply because children find it hard to understand. Math means solving problems – but learning math itself is becoming a problem. By incorporating more games, innovative assessments, and a good attitude you can change the spirit of your math class today.

Teachers must help children who struggle with math lessons. The best way to support a child’s learning of math is to have fun with numbers. Children should know that math is not abstract, but has a role in daily life. Here are few practical tips:

• At the end of every math class, raise a simple mental arithmetic problem or a number puzzle for the children to work on overnight. Motivate children who come with the right answers the next day. Children will begin to eagerly await math class.
• Choose one day a week to play math games in class. Memory power is important to develop math skills. Weekly math games help students exercise their brains too.
• Thegame winners should be awarded small gifts or bonus points.
• Display in the classroom a small bulletin board to write out a Weekly Math Challenge Test. Keep posting a new mathematical puzzle in that space every week. Observe carefully the number of students solving these puzzles. For that matter, you can keep a track of students solving puzzles in the weekly challenges and the weekly winners can be given some special marks. If it turns out that a particular Math Challenge Test is too hard, offer more clues or hints to help students so they do not lose interest.
• Do not impose some math formula or methods on the children- but instead provide them a lead and then let them come out with their own suggestions and opinions. Make the math class interactive and thus entertaining. This way, the teacher teaches less and the children excitedly learn more from one another.
• Think of several novel ways of teaching math and experiment with different methods in each class. Variety is fun and children will also become curious and eagerly wait to know what will happen in the next class.
• It is essential that the teacher enjoys math. The math teacher must prepare lessons with imagination and make them appealing. Encourage a spirit of healthy competition among children by having games in the classroom to teach new math skills.
• There are a number of web resources active today in guiding parents and teacher about math learning tips and tricks.

Children are likely to hate anything that is dull but will love things that amuse them. As a teacher makes math class amusing and sets children up with some simple, yet seemingly difficult problems they gain interest. Here are a few examples:

• Find a way to incorporate their interests into the math test. If they love basketball, use basketball examples. If they love Playstation 3, then use that. Ask them what they love and use their interests to interest them, crazy idea, right?
• Have students figure your age by giving them a complicated math equation. Have them guess the number of kids you have in the same way.
• Do your very best to figure out real world examples of the applications that you are talking about. Kids love it when they see math applied.

Math teachers are not required to strain their imagination. There are excellent online and offline sources available for getting math puzzles, mental arithmetic, math problems, math games and math brain teasers. Computer labs and Internet have plenty of ideas for enriching programs for children. Many sites offer games, math puzzles, math riddles and simple but exciting math problems.