Math in the Real World--With Emily Nantz

Emily Nantz, anchor and reporter for KULR-8, was kind enough to help me create some short videos (some are about 30 seconds) that provide students with math problems relating to her "every day life". I think it's so important for students to see how math applies to real life and to various careers. These videos are mostly geared toward K-3 curriculum, however, the last video does have students finding the average temperature.

How might you use these videos?  Instead of doing a Problem of the Day or math journaling by writing a problem on the board, you could show the short video clip and have the students solve the video problem in their math journals.  (Thanks to Amy Robson for her idea and inspiration!)

All of these videos took about 30 minutes for us to film.  It was a much faster process than I thought! I used a FlipVideo camera, so capturing the video and uploading to my computer was quite simple! 

Hopefully these examples will get you thinking about other people at your school and in our community that might provide real world problems for your students.  How do ranchers use math in the real world?  What about your school cook or custodian?  Perhaps you have parents that could share problems that relate to their profession, be it a construction worker or a stay at home mom...the possibilities are endless!

I would love to hear about the integration of these in your classrooms, so feel free to email me with your success stories!  

Emily Nantz-Introduction

Breakfast Bars Problem

Elapsed Time

Monkey Problem

Weather Problem

Weather Problem-Finding the Average Low