7 Real-World Math Strategies

We asked our audience how they're using the real-world to teach

math, and then compiled their most intriguing responses.
By Emelina Minero
June 13, 2018

Math used to be all rote memorization and pencil-to-paper equations

disconnected from the real world, but more and more teachers are realizing
the importance of making practical, relevant connections in math.

We asked our audience of educators: How do you use the real world to teach
math? We’ve collected some of the most interesting answers, ways teachers
are connecting math to the everyday lives of their students.

THE REAL-WORLD MATH WALL

To get her fifth-grade students thinking about the math in their lives—and to
head off the inevitable “we’ll never use this in the real world” complaint—
Samantha Baumgardner, a teacher at Woodrow Petty Elementary School in
Taft, Texas, has them bring in a common item and write three ways it relates
to math on a notecard. These objects form the class’s real-world math wall.

Savannah Olkowski

Students bring in objects to put on the wall, with descriptions of how they’re connected to math.
An interesting rule: Once something is placed on the wall, the same item can’t
be brought in again—pushing students to think outside the box to make real-
world math connections. Students bring in objects like playing cards, cake
pans, softball score sheets, and cookie recipes. One student brought in a
medicine dropper and by way of explanation wrote, “The medicine dropper
helps you measure water, and it also helps you with cooking steak.”

Savannah Olkowski

Samantha Baumgardner and her students and their real-world math wall.

A SCHOOL WATER AUDIT

Krista Dunlop-Sheppard

Students measure the flow rate of water at the classroom faucet.

At North Agincourt Jr. Public School in Scarborough, Canada, Krista Dunlop-

Sheppard, a bilingual resource and home school teacher for grades 1–6, has
her students conduct a water audit at home and at their school. Her students
have a wide range of math ability: In a single class, she has students with
learning disabilities, students who are gifted, and students who have no
diagnoses but need extra support. Modifying a pilot project created by
the Toronto Zoo Education Department, students add, subtract, find
averages, and measure liquids—like the flow rate of all the water fountains,
toilets, and urinals—to measure the amount of water their school uses in a
day.

They also interview custodians to discover their daily water usage while
mopping floors, and do online research to find out how much water the
cafeteria dishwasher uses. When finished, students suggest ways for the
school to conserve—like collecting rainwater in a barrel to water plants, and
cleaning paint brushes in a bucket instead of using running water. In June,
students repeat the water audit and see if the changes they implemented
made a difference.

ACTING OUT RESTAURANT SCENARIOS

There’s nothing wrong with using money to teach negative and positive
numbers, or pizza to introduce fractions, but Justin Ouellette—a third- to fifth-
grade International Baccalaureate educator at Suzhou Singapore International
School in China—takes these exercises a memorable step further, bringing in
menus so students can act out true-to-life restaurant scenarios. Going dutch
on dinner and tipping reinforces addition, subtraction, decimals, and percents,
Ouellette says.

If you need a good resource: Ouellette has used this free lesson plan about
a fictional eatery called the Safari Restaurant.

Justin Ouellette

Justin Ouellette’s students practice their math on printouts from the fictional Safari Restaurant.

INTEGRATING MATH INTO ENGLISH AND HISTORY

Making real-world math connections can happen outside of math class, too.

While reading Elie Wiesel’s Night, 12th-grade students at Kittatinny Regional

High School in Hampton Township, New Jersey, calculate the volume of 11
millionpennies to help them imagine the impact of the lives lost during the
Holocaust. Ashley Swords, a resource center English teacher for grades nine
to 12, uses pennies because they are small and plentiful and allow her to
recontextualize a familiar, everyday object.

Students perform other calculations to amplify the impact of the lessons—at

the school’s football field, for example, they determine the volume of Swords
herself and then calculate how many football fields would be needed to bury
the 11 million Holocaust victims if they were each Swords’s size and were
buried in graves 10 feet deep. Guesses ranged from two to 20 football fields,
with students finally concluding that it would take about 343 football fields.

Swords knew this lesson was a success when a group of six seniors got
emotional after completing it and realizing the magnitude of the deaths in
World War II.

Michelle Powers

Ashley Swords and her students measure the football field as part of their investigation of the Holocaust through
Elie Wiesel’s novel “Night.”

MATH RECIPES
Recipes were perhaps the most popular idea among the elementary teachers
who responded to our request for real-world math examples. Fifth-grade
teacher Gabi Sanfilippo of Meadow Ridge in Orland Park, Illinois, for example,
asked her students to write down one to two ways they used math outside of
the classroom during spring break—and more than half of her students
wrote that they practiced using measurements and fractions while baking and
cooking with their families.

Gabi Sanfilippo

One of Gabi Sanfilippo's students changes the amounts of ingredients needed for a brookie—a brownie-
cookie—to practice fractions.

In class, students practice halving, tripling, or quadrupling recipes based on

how many people they’d cook or bake for. Most teachers don’t actually cook in
class, but often students cook at home to practice their new skills.

Another educator, Elizabeth Eagan of Bastrop Independent School District in

Texas, brings in a toaster oven to bake in class. She teaches the visually
impaired, from newborns to 22-year-olds, using recipes in large print, braille,
or audio to show the real-world application of adding and subtracting fractions.

Eagan prints out recipes at 129 percent for her low-vision students or converts
the text to braille using braille transcription software, and then prints them
using a braille printer. She purchased Stir It Up, a cookbook in both braille
and print that makes it easier for families and teachers to help their students if
they haven’t mastered the tactile language. Students may use electronic
magnifying glasses like Pebble and Ruby. For audio, Eagan records herself
reading the recipes, has a peer or parent help, or uses the app Seeing AI,
which can scan and read recipes aloud.

Elizabeth Eagan

Elizabeth Eagan bakes at the home of one of her students with her parents. Eagan’s student multiplied the
ingredients by four to make breakfast for her family.

GROCERY STORE FIELD TRIP

Many teachers make real-world math connections to grocery shopping.
Leanna Agcaoili’s second-grade students at Joseph J. Fern Elementary
School in Honolulu, Hawaii, are tasked with creating a healthy meal for their
family on a $20 budget. On a grocery store field trip, students practice adding
and subtracting one- and two-digit whole numbers—and learn about money
and budgeting in the process.

Agcaoili says she’ll do a practice run in class next year, noting that the first
time through some students had difficulty finding their ingredients.

GRAPHING FAVORITE HALLOWEEN CANDY WRAPPERS

After Halloween, Dottie Wright Berzins, a retired public school teacher, had
her students bring in wrappers from their favorite Halloween candy.
Depending on the age, the students then created graphs showing their
favorite candies.

Younger ages built life-size candy bar graphs, marking the x- and y-axis with
masking tape on the floor and using the wrappers to represent the bars. Older
students constructed tally charts and paper graphs, and followed ads,
tracked which brands advertised more, interviewed peers about their favorite
candy, made predictions, and created what-if scenarios—like what if the price
of chocolate increased—how would that variable impact the graph?