Strategy: Real-World Math

The Learning Benefits

• When students see relevance in the content they are studying, it increases their motivation.
• Students are more likely to be engaged by problems and projects they can related to a real situation or lived experience. This also encourages more productive classroom math discourse among peers.

Classroom Tactics

• Start by learning about students' interests and lived experiences that could relate to the content. Then think about how to incorporate them into a math problem or project. 
• To make this strategy effective, connect the content to places, people, objects, situations, or cultural contexts that are familiar to or meaningful for your students so that the connections are truly real-world.
• Consider having students co-design activities that encourage them to apply math in contexts outside of the math classroom.

How Speak Agent Makes It Better

Virtually every story-based activity in Speak Agent explores a real-world context. Some stories explore aspirations, like a young man who wants to start a food truck business. Others cover topics such as careers, family history, sports, current events, hobbies, role-playing, adventures, shopping, and financial literacy—like how to measure a TV screen size or use a bank account. All of these stories closely integrate with the classroom curriculum. 

In addition, many activities in Speak Agent provide an authentic purpose by having students write or create works for their peers. For example, Math Puzzle Maker lets students make a problem for classmates to solve.