Are you struggling to engage your students in math class? You’re not alone. Many teachers like you face the challenge of making math exciting, relevant, and fun for students. But fear not! You can transform your math classroom into a dynamic and inspiring learning environment with the right math lessons and approach. Finding or preparing resources can feel like a losing battle when engaged in trench warfare against time and budget limitations, gaining little to no ground in your campaign. But help has finally arrived.

At the Congressional Medal of Honor Society (CMOHS), we proudly offer the Character Development Program (CDP) to teachers like you who lack the support they need to provide lessons that genuinely resonate with students. Here is everything you need to know about how to make math engaging,  from why it matters to how CDP can help. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Why is Math Important for Students?

Math is essential to a quality education because it equips students with the tools they need to describe, analyze, and even change the world.

By developing critical thinking and decision-making skills, you turn your students into independent thinkers and leaders who can reason, problem solve, manage risk, and even think creatively. 

In many ways, math is an international language that transcends cultural boundaries and helps your students better relate to the world. Math could even be described as a creative discipline – you just have to show students why.

All of this and more is why effective math lessons are crucial! Still, reaching students and engaging them can be a challenge, but there is help as you learn how to teach math in an interesting way that resonates.

Related Article: How to Empower Students in the Classroom

How to Make Math Fun for Middle School & High School Students

Making math fun is crucial because it keys in on what is at the heart of what makes a classroom environment successful: motivation. 

It is impossible to understate the importance of motivation in mathematics, especially for teachers trying to get their students to flourish in the classroom and get excited about learning math! 

There are several different math teaching strategies for those wondering how to make math fun for middle school and high school students:

• Apply Math to Real-World Situations
• Offer a Variety of Learning Materials and Approaches
• Get to Know Your Students
• Connect Mathematics to Existing Knowledge
• Create a Classroom Culture that Develops a Growth Mindset

By adopting these tactics, you’ll learn more than just how to make math more engaging – you’ll learn how to make students love mathematics and inspire them to become the leaders our country and their communities need! 

Use the Language of Mathematics in Real-World Situations

Some of the most powerful math lessons show students relevant mathematics in real-world scenarios. For example, you could talk about how people use math to build houses, design cars, or calculate the cost of groceries. 

If you know a student who wants to work in a specific field after school, cater to that interest and show how math is important in that vocation. The goal, ultimately, is making it relevant to their lives. 

Even something as simple as calculating how much money they spend on snacks each week or even how many steps they take could turn into fun math activities for high school and middle school! 

By finding teachable everyday moments, you’re sowing the seeds of a love for mathematics in your learners. Lessons should be interactive and push students to uncover their passion for this subject, which they may not even know they have. 

Remember – making math engaging requires understanding how to make math fun! Students are often far more engaged and intrigued if they see how math applies to the real world. 

Because these lessons will be memorable and fun for them, they will also be more likely to apply what they learn outside the classroom, deepening their knowledge and appreciation of this invaluable subject. 

Offer a Variety of Learning Materials and Approaches

It’s also important to remember two things – everyone has a different idea of fun, and people learn differently. It’s what makes people so interesting! 

Find math resources for teachers and students that offer a variety of both to maximize the impact of your lessons! 

Offering math lessons online, for example, could be ideal for some students and a great way to foster independent learning. For others, however, group classroom lessons could be just what you need to inspire their love of math.

It’s also essential to leverage technology and innovative student portals to allow your students to play a more engaged role in experimenting, investigating, and problem-solving. 

Using technology can revolutionize math learning in your classroom by making it interactive, visual, and immersive.  

You should also consider gamifying lessons. Leveraging fun math activities that feel like games instead of traditional, didactic lessons can go a long way in maintaining and building your students’ motivation and momentum. 

A puzzle, for example, could help students learn new concepts, hone their skills, and have fun while they do it! Include plenty of fun opportunities for hands-on and cooperative learning.  

If learning becomes a memorable experience they enjoyed, the concepts they learned through that experience will become more deeply ingrained. 

Get to Know Your Students

When tailoring your math lessons to individual learning styles and personalities, you may feel like you don’t know where to start. But the starting points are likely sitting at their desks in front of you. 

Take time to get to know your students. They are all one-of-a-kind individuals. Have conversations with them and get to know them. However, if your class is especially big, you may feel like you don’t have the time.

Using tools like surveys could be a great asset here. As you get to know and understand your students better, make adjustments as needed. 

Connect Mathematics to Existing Knowledge

Relating math concepts to existing knowledge is one of the best ways to inspire change in students and keep them engaged for those wondering how to teach math in an interesting way.

Similar to relating mathematics to real-world scenarios, connecting math to existing knowledge is a great way to get your students to reinvent their approach to and perspective of mathematics. 

For example, many students have, at the very least, basic knowledge of history. Just as importantly, these topics are often student favorites. 

Using math lessons that tie in unimaginable stories of valor will turn your class into a transformative experience. 

Create a Classroom Culture that Develops a Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is essential to learning and mastering nearly every discipline imaginable, but this is especially true for students. Challenge fixed mindsets that could be holding them back. Some ways to adopt this mindset include:

• Offering a range of challenging and open-ended problems to solve
• Celebrating mistakes and showing students how to learn from them
• Praising the process instead of the person
• Group your students into mixed-ability groupings so they can learn from each other. Grouping students with diverse backgrounds is also great.
• Recognizing your attitudes towards math and understanding how you project this mindset. Is there a topic you don’t particularly enjoy teaching? Maybe you need to adopt a growth mindset in some areas, too.
• Empowering students to take ownership of their learning journey

When you find fun ways to practice math for your students, it won’t even feel like being in school for them. And that’s what effective lessons should do. 

Luckily, reinforcements have arrived as FREE online learning resources that help you achieve all of the above! 

Created for teachers by teachers, CDP is a treasure trove of readymade lessons that can be seamlessly integrated into virtually any lesson plan to inspire your students to reach their full potential in and outside of the classroom. 

CDP: Math Lessons that Inspire Students

The Character Development Program (CDP) is a FREE resource with a plethora of lessons that marry academic success and character development and can cater to a range of learning styles. 

Access Our FREE Math Lessons Here!

These courses revolve around the values that define the heroes who have been awarded the Medal of Honor: courage, commitment, integrity, sacrifice, citizenship, and patriotism. These lessons are easily adaptable, promote self-guided self-discovery, and create riveting classroom discussions. 

Revolving around military and civilian stories, the math lessons in the CDP provide real-life applications of fundamental math concepts and an opportunity for students to connect mathematical concepts to their knowledge of history as well as their lives. 

Maybe you want to help your students learn to analyze data while developing a deep appreciation for the sacrifices Medal of Honor recipients have made. CDP can help. Alternatively, maybe you are looking for lessons that can be effective for classroom and distance learning. CDP has you covered there, too. 

Alternatively, maybe your students want to feel inspired by the rush of survival and duty that Medal of Honor recipients have experienced. For example, CDP’s “Survival Math” lesson for middle and high school students can help teach algebra, angles, and more while keeping students on the edges of their seats!

These fun math activities for middle school and high school students contain a range of downloadable materials and videos created and vetted by teachers like you who are committed to helping their students realize their full potential. 

Related Article: FREE Teaching Resources for Middle School | No Lesson Planning Required!

How Do CDP’s Math Lessons Work?

CDP’s innovative math lessons are a teacher’s best friend – there’s no lesson prep required! These lessons will equip you with everything you need to create a math learning experience and environment unlike any other. Lessons include:

• Lesson objectives
• Downloadable materials and worksheets to support learning
• Engaging videos to create an immersive experience
• The Medal of Honor focus within each lesson
• A guide for how to prepare students for the lesson
• An introductory activity
• A whole group activity
• Several small group/individual activities
• A concluding activity
• An assessment
• Extended activities that promote self-discovery outside of the classroom

All you have to do is deploy these FREE lessons, and your students will be inspired to answer the call. 

Related Article: Why is History Important for Students? The Foundation for Future Leaders

Are You Interested in FREE Math Resources for Teachers? Register for CDP Today for Math Lessons & More! 

Learning how to make math fun for high school students and middle school students can be daunting when faced with budget and time constraints. After all, it’s not always easy to truly connect with your class. Luckily, at CMOHS, we offer the Character Development Program, which offers an abundance of cross-curricular lessons that will teach math in a way that resonates while helping your students become the heroes of the future. 

The math lesson from CDP plus your class is a surefire equation to create the active citizens our country and your students’ communities need. Register for CDP today for FREE to start using the math lessons.