Week 2- We're Poppin' for Math

Title: We're Poppin' for Math
Author: Brenda Levert

This article was really inspiring. To give you all an idea, it is about middle school students planning a popcorn sale and using math to do it. Brenda stated that her main issue is that students don't like math because they always think they will never use it in the real world. This is her way of showing that math is used in everyday life especially profit, cost and revenue. These students actually had to calculate how much all of the supplies cost, and figure out how much they should sell the bags of popcorn for to not just break even, but make a profit. this reminded me of an assignment I did in 7th grade. We all had to design and make our own water park and figure out how much it would cost to build it, maintain it, and pay workers and then relay that to how much we should charge to get in. The popcorn idea seems way more fun because it something easy to visualize and it gets the whole school involved. It also very realistically relates to jobs the children might have one day.

Q1: What kinds of math activities like these could I incorporate into my elementary classroom?
A1: One way I think would be good to incorporate math into the classroom is to have a class store. I could stock it up with pencils, erasers, folders, and other goodies that children in elementary school like. Two people could run the store each day or even week and the students can earn money (points) for being good, turning in all homework, helping others, etc. They can spend this money on the store during time set aside for it or at lunch or recess. I think this would give the children a way of understanding subtraction and addition in a more realistic fashion.
Q2: Is there any way we could relate real world concepts into other subjects by doing an activity like this?
A2: I think that incorporating activities like these into history really makes the children more interested in it. I think I would do a bead exchange for 4th grade history (where they learn about Indians) You can have different colored beads be worth more than others and have the children learn all about bartering and trading like the Indians did (I'll give you this for that, etc.) I think it would work great and give them an idea of what daily life was like for Indians when there wasn't any paper money.