Math IRL (in Real Life)

Sometimes, coming up with things that we can do in classes can be tough, but one thing that is always easy if finding math in real life! Courtney invited me in to come up with a project to help with parallel lines and transversals. As I thought more about it, I thought about how often these pop up in our daily lives. Courtney then challenged the students to take some pictures of these natural occurrences so that we could mark them up.

I used the above picture that I took. As you can see, there are multiple parallel lines and multiple transversals. Having students prove their knowledge through labeling them is a real-world application of the math that they are learning. While they are not measuring specific angles, they are viewing the relationships between the angles and developing an understanding. We used ThingLink, a photo annotation tool, to mark the pictures. Here is my example below.

As you hover over the embedded image, you will see the labels that have been created and labeled. They site also allows you to use different forms of tagging, such as video or websites. Overall, it encourages the students to create and develop an understanding of what is going on in their math class and how it can relate to the real world.

If you want to do something like this in your class, do not hesitate to ask!