Year 1 Digital Math Vocabulary Games

Our Year 1 Digital Math Vocabulary Games will help your students build their math vocabulary. Fun, Interactive, and Digital math games your kids will beg to play!

“Not being able to read the question” is the number 1 reason, given by teachers, for their kids not doing well at maths testing.

This reason is really surprising, as the kids are generally doing well at “reading”in the English Learning Area. So why is there a problem in maths?

Researchers have found that kids struggle with reading math questions because:

Reading math questions is very different to reading regular literacy texts. It’s dense and includes symbols and graphics.

Fewer words are used in math texts compared to very detailed paragraphs in novels. So kids need excellent inferencing and contextual understanding skills to be able to make sense of math questions.
The meaning of words changes significantly in math problems compared to how they are used in everyday life. E.g. volume might mean the sound control on a T.V. remote but in mathematics it is linked to measurement.
Many words in maths have more than one meaning, that changes in different contexts, e.g. square is a shape, but can also be a square number.
Some words are unique to maths which means students cannot take an informed guess as to the meaning. E.g. numerator and denominator.

So spending time on building math vocabulary will have a huge impact on student achievement.

Don’t take my word for this, there’s lots of research to back it up too. Studies by Swan & Dunstan; Hirsh & Nation found:

vocabulary is connected with reading comprehension and is predictor of students’ comprehension
Students need to know 90-95% of the words in a text before they can comprehend that text
Vocabulary need to be explicitly taught first
Students from low socio economic areas need greater support
Teaching math vocabulary can help raise student achievement levels
Students with high vocabularies are better at mathematical reasoning

So it’s pretty clear that including math vocabulary activities are a MUST, and if included ,will increase the level of achievement for students. Now we’re all for that!

Year 1 Math Vocabulary Digital Word Searches

To help you build Math vocabulary with your Year 1 students we created a set of Online Math Vocabulary Word Search Games.

There’s Word Searches Games for for Number & Algebra, Measurement & Geometry & Statistics & Probability math vocabulary. Each word search includes a list of words that your students will, see, hear, read & use in the Year one math curriculum.

The best bit is they are NO Prep, all you need is an internet connection to play!

As well as building a bank of words the word searches should be used to facilitate “Number Talks” or “Math Chats” about each mathematical concept.

These word search games are interactive and self-checking and have the math words shown on the right-hand side.

Just log in and start! Not a VIP Member? then try a Free version below…

FREE Year 1 Math Vocabulary Digital Word Searches

To play the games you will need:

an internet connection
a modern browser like Google Chrome or Safari
turn your sound on too because many of these games have fun sound effects.
The online games open in your browser making them easy to access and use
The math word list is on the right. On the left, you will see the letter grid. Search for your words in the letter grade and click when you have found a word. If it is a correct selection the letters will flip to reveal a colour. If the selection is wrong you will get a red cross. You have 10 lives!

Try our List 1 Game FREE!