I feel as a math teacher, we're constantly on the defence of our subject, always wanting to make it relevant. And sometimes, this can be a stretch. There isn't always a perfect answer to the question: "When am I ever going to use this in real life?" (The answer "on next week's test" is apparently not satisfactory for most high schoolers I know). We're also not the subject known for the highest levels of excitement; I would say we may only be beating Physics in this category, but after all the Higgs-Boson hoopla... Anyway, I was thinking about how to be fun and relevant. I thought that everyone loves getting outside the classroom. So I thought about making up a fun scavenger-hunt type activity and I would call it #MathIRL. (If you are unfamiliar with IRL, it means "in real life"). It could be a one-day event, but could carry on to be something that gets re-visited throughout the semester via Twitter or other hash-tagable social media.
I haven't gone far with the planning, but you could tailor it to what works around your school. I would have several items on the scavenger list that relate to the grocery store. What is the best value for a bottle of ketchup? So they have to calculate the per unit price for different brands. Or going to a different store that has brand names on sale and seeing if a brand name on sale is cheaper than a generic brand. Or something related to the price of gas where they have to compare what is better, to drive a certain number of km with regular gas, or being about to drive more km on premium, and they'd have to find the price of each. There could also be one related to sending a parcel, so they have to go to the post office and do some surface-area/volume calculations, or the cost per weight of the parcel.
The follow-up is getting them to continue looking for math in their real lives as the semester goes on. They could tweet it, or take a picture on their phones, bring it in, and let the class know where they are using #mathIRL.
(I checked and there are already lots of tweets with the hashtag #mathIRL. Fun to see that people are now getting on board with the fact that math matters!!!)
Any ideas for the scavenger hunt? Would love to hear your suggestions and feedback!
Melinda!
ReplyDeleteI think it is so funny that you are bringing this up!
I'm creating a CLA for an Environment Specialist High Skills Major Program. This is a "geocaching" scavenger hunt for students. I'm creating it to be adapted to any wooded trail with a body of water. I'm hoping to have it cover all strands of grade 10 applied math. Students will use either their phones or ipads to search out the co-ordinates of an area that will have a math question to complete. It will be done in pairs. If you're interested in more information about this, I would be happy to provide. :)