I am so excited to be back blogging with my blogging buddy, Jasmine for her You Oughta Know Blog Hop! This is becoming one of my FAVORITE link ups, because everyone has such great ideas!
This month, I want to talk about how I make learning math AND science relevant to my 6th graders! I don't know about anyone else out there, but I am CONSTANTLY being asked "When will I use this in real life???" I have been asked that MULTIPLE times right now with my unit on Algebra, So...this month, I want to talk about things that I have found that work well in my classroom to keep students engaged knowing that what they are learning CAN be used it real life. :)
First, I'll start with a bulletin board that I have in my classroom. It's titled "Math and Science in Real Life", and silly me, took pictures of what is ON the board, and not the board itself. :/ So, if you would like to see the actual board, I plan to add that on this week at some point.
This is how the board works: There are two slips of paper that students can choose from (you can get them HERE). One is for how they have used/witnessed science in real life, and one is for math. The students then take one of the slips, fill it out, show me, and then share it with the class as they post it to the board.
My students have REALLY enjoyed this, and it is amazing how excited they are when they see something outside of school used in the "real world". They have brought in coupons, internet stories about science things that we have learned, and even sales papers when we were learning about unit rates!
The second thing that I try to do to make learning relevant to the real world, is USE real world things and places to teach math! We have already done a GREAT sales paper activity this year that I blogged about, and recently we were learning about graphing inequalities (which CAN be a pretty dry math subject).
However, when I had them go to three different theme park websites, and pick four different rides with four different height requirements, they had a BALL, and told me that this was the BEST math activity we did all year!
Of course, once the math part was done I had to give them 5 minutes to watch the roller coaster videos. :) It was by FAR one of the most engaging activities that I have done all year! I plan on creating this with task cards with QR Codes, so stay tuned to when I get that posted. In the mean time, I will post back here on Wednesday with the link of the ones that I used for this project.
I hope that you enjoyed these ideas, and I would love to hear how YOU keep learning RELEVANT to real life! Don't forget to check out these other AMAZING teachers, and their GREAT ideas that You OUGHTA know about!
