In my middle school and high school mathematics classes, I don’t remember participating in many interactive math lessons. Math class consisted of the teacher showing us how to do the math and then us, the students, doing textbook work. I can’t remember doing much more than this. Any applications that we discussed were from questions in the textbook. Many students struggle to learn mathematics in this type of context. Some find it uninteresting and believe it to be pointless. When students ask me to explain why they would ever need to know a particular difficult math concept, sometimes I have an answer, but sometimes I don’t. This project has led me to investigate how I can bring applications of mathematics and math activities into the classroom to engage students. Through this project, I have found many ways to engage students through math applications and activities.
I have selected six activities from each grade to highlight. On each of the pages for these activities, I included my lesson plan for the activity, other resources and links that relate to the activity, and student feedback. I asked students questions about their interest in the activity and their understanding of the concepts in the activity. They responded on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 indicates the least and 5 indicates the most. I have also included selections of their written feedback on the activities. In addition, I have included links to other activities and resources that I have used with my classes that do not include feedback. I am happy to share these ideas and resources with any who are interested.
Dan Meyers on Real-World Math
In the video below, Dan Meyers discusses the impact of including real-world math applications in math classes.
Impact on Students
Through surveys and informal feedback, I found that my students really enjoyed the activities that we did in class. Some of our most productive math discussions stemmed from these activities. Having exposure to applications of mathematical concepts helped students make new connections to material that strengthened their understanding. The games that I included also helped to make our classes more fun. In these ways, my professional inquiry project proved to be a success.