Making Maths Cool!

Mrs Cox’s year 8 Mathematics class were given a challenge of planning, creating and producing a mathematical game for younger students to use for revision and consolidation of mathematical concepts.

The challenge was set after a group discussion on how we could improve ours and others understanding of mathematics. From our discussion we all agreed that:

"Play is one of the best ways for students to learn"

"Play is important for student’s development of self-esteem and social skills."

“Mathematical games are for everyone. Whether a student does well or struggles with mathematics, mathematical games teach new concepts and provide lots of opportunity to practice. A good game allows people with all levels of skill to participate together”.

“Mathematics is a discipline containing many abstract concepts. Mathematics games immediately engage children's interest and turn the abstract concepts into concrete situations that they can understand”.

During the two allocated lessons rough designs were sketched, material listed followed by construction and written rules completed. The lessons went very quickly with outstanding behaviour displayed by all, The completed board games will be trailed and tested by year 7 in the next couple of weeks.



Humans learn by doing and observing people and experiences around them. The more structured and organized a child's playtime, the more constructive things they will learn, but this structure and organization needs to be enjoyable or the child will lose interest. Board games are great ways to teach children important skills while still letting them explore themselves and their limitations and encourage them to develop social skills.