At the start of the school year, I like to begin our very first maths lesson with a game. I never tell students we’re about to start maths. I simply ask who would like to play a game.
And, unsurprisingly, nearly every hand goes up.
After introducing the game, I let it run for as long as we can, giving them space to get fully absorbed in it.
Once the game ends, I casually ask the class how they feel about maths. Without fail, you’ll see strong, divided reactions. Half the class (often more) will passionately declare that they hate maths, while the rest say they love it.
Then comes the best moment: I tell them they’ve just spent the last stretch of time doing maths.
The reaction was always the same: confusion first, the ripple of disbelief, and finally animated chatter as the realisation begins to land.
“What? What do you mean…? You tricked us!”
At that point, we unpack the game together. We’d talk through the decisions they made, the patterns they noticed, the strategies they used without even realising.
It’s one of my favourite teaching moments. Not because it’s amusing to watch them ‘crash out’ (as the cool kids say), but because it’s the start of something important. It’s the first tiny shift away from a belief that maths lives somewhere separate from their world, confined to textbooks and worksheets, where right/wrong answers collect red pen corrections.
That shift brings them closer to realising that maths isn’t a locked door that only some students will ever know how to open. It’s a lens for making sense of the world. It shows up constantly. It’s in games, in sport, in music, in planning a route, in deciding the “best” move when there isn’t an obvious answer.
It’s for everyone. And it’s happening everywhere, all the time.
Once students start to see that, something shifts. Maths becomes less of a hurdle and more of something familiar. Something they can actually access and in turn something they actually enjoy.
The power of offline maths games
In a world full of apps, devices and subscriptions, offline maths games feel almost rebellious. A deck of cards, some dice and maybe a few counters. Children huddled in pairs or small groups, scribbling on whiteboards. It appears simple, yet research shows it’s incredibly powerful.
When children play maths games face-to-face, something deeper happens. They talk. They argue. They negotiate. They explain. They laugh. They learn from mistakes without even realising they’re doing it.
Suddenly the child who usually avoids maths is leaning forward saying, “Hang on a minute, if you use that card, you’ll get 12 altogether!”
Meanwhile, another student is mentally adding, subtracting, strategising and problem-solving because they desperately want to win a game involving tiny plastic bears.
Maths games are powerful because they lower the stakes while lifting engagement.
For many students, worksheets can feel permanent and daunting. Games feel safe, playful and flexible. Mistakes become part of the fun instead of confirmation of their (perceived) lack of ability. When students are engaged in a game, they don’t even realise they’re practising fluency because they’re too busy celebrating a lucky dice roll like they’ve just won a premiership.
Games build more than maths skills
There’s that old saying: you don’t always remember the specifics you were taught, but you do remember how it made you feel.
Learning is emotional. Students remember how maths feels.
It’s why, even as adults, that visceral “I hate maths” or “I can’t do maths” still lingers and resonates long after the lesson itself has been forgotten.
Offline games create positive emotional experiences around mathematics. They help students associate maths with connection, fun, challenge and success instead of pressure or fear.
Offline games naturally encourage mathematical talk, and mathematical talk builds understanding. Children explain strategies more freely when they’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with a partner instead of staring silently at a screen waiting for the next question to load.
And unlike digital games, offline games can’t instantly give the answer. Students have to wrestle with ideas. They need to justify their thinking. They learn persistence. There’s no quick right or wrong answer. That discussion is where students’ mathematical reasoning and thinking develops.
Through games, students develop strong mathematical skills alongside a range of soft skills, such as perseverance, a growth mindset, communication, collaboration, and strategic thinking. All valuable classroom skills. All valuable life skills.
Giving students a reason to love maths
Games are just the beginning. They open the door, but the real work is in the conversation that follows. The moment where we help students reflect and recognise that they’ve been thinking mathematically all along.
From there, we can build lessons that lean into that sense of discovery. Tasks that are creative, highly differentiated, and rooted in real thinking rather than rote procedure. We can encourage students to ask questions, test ideas, make mistakes safely, and see those mistakes not as failures, but as part of the learning process.
Most importantly, we help them understand that maths is not something done to them. It is something they actively do every day, in ways big and small.
And once that shift begins, the classroom changes. Hesitation turns into participation. Resistance turns into curiosity. And slowly, the familiar “I hate maths” begins to be replaced with something far more powerful: “What do we get to do in maths today?
”Want to try an easily adaptable game with your students tomorrow?
Try this Tic Tac Toe game.