Preparing for the FCAT: Math Games for Students

Practice Problems from the Florida Department of Education

The Florida Department of Education offers free sample questions to help students in grades 3-8 prepare for the FCAT 2.0 (the 2011-2012 version of the original FCAT exam). These samples can be printed out and used as practice quizzes. Most of the problems found here are multiple-choice, but decimal questions have a number grid instead, where students must fill in the correct decimal point.

The samples are not full-length or actual FCAT exams from past years; however, they are designed to give kids and parents a sense of what areas of math will appear on each grade's exam. You might want to check here first to get a sense of what types of math problems your child should focus his or her study on before moving on to other math game sites.

Games from Coolmath-Games.com

Your child can come here and play math games to practice FCAT math skills, like solving equations with fractions and decimals. These online games are best suited for elementary or middle school students. The games use colorful graphics and music to engage kids with math concepts.

Additionally, some of the games, like the fraction game 'Fractone', encourage kids to work as quickly as possible, which is a skill that will come in handy on test day. In order for your child to play these games, you may need the current edition of Flash or Java on your computer.

Interactive Pre-Algebra Game from Learning Wave

This complex, multi-step online game can help your junior high school student prepare for the FCAT exam. The game has a storyline in which players must help to save a creature that has been captured by an evil cult. In order to move forward and save him, players must correctly answer pre-algebra questions, like adding negative integers and solving for a variable. You can e-mail the game's creators for an answer key.