{"id":11988,"date":"2025-05-27T07:29:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T11:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.com\/blog\/?p=11988"},"modified":"2025-05-25T16:02:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-25T20:02:48","slug":"making-math-meaningful-reimagining-real-world-problems-in-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachersfirst.org\/blog\/2025\/05\/making-math-meaningful-reimagining-real-world-problems-in-math\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Math Meaningful: Reimagining \u201cReal World\u201d Problems in Math"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The question, \u201cWhen will I ever use this?\u201d is common in middle and high school math classrooms. While students sometimes throw this question out when they want to dig in their heels and avoid work, it\u2019s a valid concern that teachers need to address. Adolescent motivation wanes when the intent and purpose of learning don\u2019t seem relevant to their real lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canned curriculum situations where \u201creal-life\u201d problems become contrived to target a particular math concept create challenges for teachers and frustrations for students. If these are the only examples, students will continue to view math as a series of equations, formulas, and graphs\u2014all while teachers know that math holds much more potential as a beautiful and powerful way to interpret and understand the world. So how can we resolve this discrepancy and make math more meaningful and relevant to our students?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Approaches to Building Authentic Mathematical Connections<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Amplify Math Vice President and former math educator Dan Meyer points to the importance of providing the mathematical necessity when solving problems. In this blog post<\/a>, Meyer poses the question, \u201cIf math is the aspirin, then how do you create the headache?\u201d To put it simply, the goal of instructional design is to create experiences for students that help them recognize that math isn\u2019t pointless and that learning new mathematical concepts can help remove limitations to problem-solving. For example, understanding the concept of percent increase allows us to compare two quantities that have changed; knowing how to do this calculation can confirm or refute marketing claims that products contain \u201c120% more\u201d or contain \u201cdouble stuff.\u201d Students will want to learn the math to determine the truth of advertising to ensure they aren\u2019t getting tricked and are spending money wisely when purchasing these products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Educator Bruce Grip provides another perspective<\/a>, offering a real-life math \u201csandwich\u201d approach to applied problem solving. Grip explains the process of mathematical modeling involves quantifying real-world factors, applying math to the model to solve the problem, interpreting the result to determine if the model was sufficient, and taking action on these conclusions. That final step is critical and transforms this problem-solving process from the canned-curriculum-type word problem to a tool to understand and connect with the world. Teachers can explore Grip\u2019s curated collection of culturally relevant mathematical modeling resources<\/a>, diverse modeling lessons from the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications, or the ideas below for real-world models<\/a> to use in class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rich Examples of Mathematical Applications<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1. The Golden Gate Bridge celebrates the 88th<\/sup> anniversary of its opening on May 27, 2025, but this beautiful engineering achievement is also deeply rooted in multiple high-level mathematical concepts. If you teach high school, use this opportunity to highlight the fact that the distinctive suspension cables form a catenary curve. Although a special natural exponential equation<\/a> defines its shape, it is similar to a parabola, a familiar function to high school math students in Algebra 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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