Touchstone 12: Help students do something with their learning

A good sign that the teacher is not providing enough context in the classroom is when students constantly ask, “When am I ever going to use this?” The question is an strong indication that students are not being provided with opportunities to apply their knowledge to real world situations. It is not enough for students to deeply engage with the content in the abstract, they must also connect their learning to applications outside of the classroom. Goodwin and Hubbell (2013) provide many practices that can turn everyday learning activities into an investigative opportunity. One such example that is my favorite is to allow students to develop hypotheses about what is being learned and then have them reflect throughout the lesson  on their hypothesis. Much more important to me as a mathematics educator is finding tasks that are rigorous and apply mathematics to address real problems in an authentic way. The College Preparatory Mathematics Calculus curriculum has the following problem that allows students to use math in a pretend real world situation with some silliness about rescuing a giraffe. My other favorite task for a real world connection is the cell phone triangulation problem, a version of which is linked below. Ensuring that students have access to real-world applications is the only way for students to have an ability to transfer their learning for ultimate retention.

References:

http://home.somersetcollegeprep.org/ourpages/auto/2017/4/28/53528776/Cell%20Phone%20Triangulation.pdf

Dietiker, L., Sallee, T., Kysh, J., & Hoey, B. (2003). College preparatory mathematics: Calculus. Sacramento, CA: CPM Educational Program.

Goodwin, B., & Hubbell, E. (2013). The 12 touchstones of good teaching: A checklist for staying focused every day. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.