Ever wonder if you’re the only one who sees things differently?
After years of teaching math and looking for real world applications to help my students connect the math to life, I’ve realized that this is entirely backwards. We should be looking for the math in the real world around us, not teaching abstractly and simply hoping for a need to use the math later in life.
This idea has become the premise behind two things. First, is my new book. It’s called Instant Relevance, Using Today’s Experiences to Teach Tomorrow’s Lessons and thanks to the amazing Dave Burgess and Shelley Burgess, it’s being released in early to mid August! I’m so excited about this!! The focus of the book points readers in the direction of seven major ways to connect life to learning, not just in math, but in all content, in order for your students to feel that their learning is relevant to them. My hypothesis (and I’m sticking to it) is that if the question matters to your students, they’ll do whatever it takes to answer it…including learning something new!
I hope you’ll take the chance to read my book this summer. I plan to add a weekly twitter chat on the hashtag #MakeItReal to discuss all the ways we’ve helped our students learn FROM the context, instead of FOR it.
The second is contained in this post by Alice Keeler titled: Google Math: I See Math
Everyday, we see things around us and our brains analyze them and make decisions about what those objects or moments mean to us. Alice Keeler, Diana Herrington, and I have decided to build quick lesson starters from these ideas, and to then extend those ideas into larger lessons for teachers. Read more about it here and let us know your thoughts! Also, create your own I See Math slides files and put them into our Shared Folder. This is how our students will be able to experience what we all see everyday, not just what we individually see.
So what’s the process?
Take a Photo, Add a Story, Keep it Simple, Add it to this folder. alicekeeler.com/shareiseemath
#MakeItReal